Captive Supervisory Regimes

I develop a simple theory of supervised training under multitask incentives in which participation is valuable independently of completion. When completion-inducing effort is not contractible and supervisors allocate time across competing activities, equilibrium completion effort may be pinned to the minimum required for participation. The model yields two regimes: an alignment regime, where effort is determined by marginal incentives, and a captive regime, where it is pinned by the participation constraint. Comparative statics are regime dependent and can be counterintuitive: higher completion payoffs and participation benefits may reduce effort under a captive regime, while portable benefits and competition can mitigate this distortion by raising outside options. I discuss this mechanism as an explanation for low completion rates and extended time-to-degree in graduate education in developing contexts.