When an agent’s motivation is sensitive to how his supervisor thinks about the agent’s competence, the supervisor has to take into account both informational and expressive contents of her message to the agent. This paper shows that the supervisor can credibly express her trust in the...

Agents compete to solve a problem. Each agent simultaneously chooses either a safe method or a risky method to solve the problem. This paper analyzes a prize scheme as an incentive to induce the optimal risk-taking level which maximizes the designerʼs interest. It is shown that whenever the...