We study the ability of a firm to elicit repeated effort from workers by creating a "rat race" of hierarchical status-based incentives. We examine performance using data on over 5,000 German air force pilots during World War II. Pilots' effort is hard to monitor; motivation is key to success. Fighter pilot performance increases markedly as they approach eligibility for a medal before falling off upon receipt of the award. The same effort path repeats itself as the pilot nears the next higher-prestige medal. Status-conscious pilots also exert more effort when new medals are introduced. We show that medals serve as substitutes for other forms of status. Medal cachet declines over time as lower-ability pilots receive them, making the introduction of new medals desirable. These results suggest that a tiered, expanding system of status-based incentives can repeatedly leverage worker status concerns to extract effort.

Governments frequently suspend creditor remedies during economic crises to prevent fire sales and stabilize balance sheets, yet the long-run 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. Moratoria protected distressed borrowers: counties with greater mortgage exposure experienced a persistent 15% increase in farm units. However, these policies slowed reallocation. Protected households and their children were more likely to remain in agriculture decades later, production shifted toward smaller, lower-productivity units on marginal land, and farm revenues and values declined. Borrowing costs rose by roughly 10%, and highly exposed counties exhibit weaker long-run manufacturing sectors.