How can people be motivated to provide sustained or repeated effort? We study hierarchical status incentives as a way to create a "rat race". Using data on more than 5,000 German air force pilots in World War II, we show that performance rises sharply as pilots approach medal eligibility, then falls after receiving the medal. The same pattern recurs as pilots near higher-prestige awards, and status-conscious pilots respond strongly to newly introduced medals. Medals also lose cachet as lower-ability pilots receive them, making new awards more valuable. A tiered, expanding status system can therefore repeatedly harness status concerns to extract effort.

Governments frequently suspend creditor remedies during economic crises to prevent fire sales and stabilize balance sheets, yet the consequences of such interventions remain poorly understood. We study the effects of foreclosure moratoria adopted by twenty-five U.S. states during the Great Depression on the local economy. Moratoria temporarily prevented lenders from seizing collateral from insolvent borrowers, primarily farms. Using county-level agricultural data and linked full-count census records in a triple-difference design, we examine short- and long-run allocation effects.