Holdout effects outside public leaderboard competition

Determine how the simulated benchmark holdout mechanism operates in FDA-style regulatory gatekeeping, defense procurement, and enterprise business-to-business contexts with internal proof-of-concept evaluations, including whether buyer-side internal benchmarks dampen or amplify the effect relative to public benchmarks.

Background

The reported simulation models a leaderboard-driven, multi-firm market in which public benchmarks influence provider investment, consumer choice, funding, and regulation. It does not represent settings where evaluation is controlled by regulators, conducted bilaterally under classification constraints, or performed internally by enterprise buyers.

The authors state that the mechanism's behavior in these alternative institutional settings is unknown. In enterprise procurement in particular, the relationship between buyer-side internal benchmarks and the public benchmark set is identified as the factor that would determine whether decoupling from public scores reduces or intensifies the effect.