Does a worker who had a successful career have stronger or weaker incentives to manipulate his reputation than a worker who performed poorly? This paper presents a tractable model that allows us to study career concerns when the strength of a worker's incentives depends on his employment history...

This paper analyzes the impact of market structure on career concerns. Effort increases the probability that a skilled agent achieves a one-time breakthrough. Wages are based on assessed ability and on expected output. For any wage, the agent works too little, too late. Under short-term...

In a laboratory experiment I investigate the role of perceived own ability in a multi-task setting with career concerns under fixed wages and under financial incentives with a higher weight on the task measured with noise. I find that in the absence of career concerns participants allocate...