Why does incentive pay often depend on subjective rather than objective performance evaluations? After all, subjective evaluations entail a credibility issue. While the most plausible explanation for this practice is lack of adequate objective measures, I argue that subjective evaluations might...

I study the trade-off between private and verifiable interim performance evaluations under uncertainty. More uncertainty leads to higher agency costs if the interim evaluation is public and verifiable but lower agency costs if the interim evaluation is private and unverifiable.