Suppose we have hired a contractor to build a bridge. We issue partial payment for the project in the form of a financial instrument (presumably in a mutual fund or something else that bears interest) which only pays out in X years from now if the bridge does not collapse by then. We then monitor the price of this instrument, particularly the sales by those holding it, in order to obtain information about the quality of the bridge. This allows us to obtain this information without incentivizing anyone to deliberately sabotage the bridge project (assuming we prohibit short-selling).

Huh.