This article explores the consequences of sabotage for the design of incentive contracts. The possibility of sabotage gives rise to a dynamic concern, similar to the Ratchet effect, which distorts the agents’ incentives. We first show that the mere possibility of sabotage may make it...

This article considers a model where the agent is uncertain about his innate ability and instead makes an inference from others' (namely, the principal's) perception, as often emphasized in the psychology literature. When the principal has superior knowledge about the agent's productivity than...