Balances of Incentives Essay

One of the primary fundamental ideas expressed in Freakanomic is that “incentives are the cornerstone of modern life”. An incentive is persuading people to do more good than bad. Levitt defines three types of incentives, social, economic, and moral. The authors state that individuals including sumo wrestlers and teachers, will behave unprofessionally to meet their needs and desires, if the incentives are good enough. A schoolteacher’s incentive to cheat has increased due to high-stakes testing. While a sumo wrestler’s chance of cheating will increase when he is on the bubble since the outcome of his matches will affect every aspect of his life. In order to determine if these incentives to cheat exist, specific data is viewed. For the

Economic incentives are those that a person responds to in the marketplace. Finally, moral incentives appeal to a person’s sense of right and wrong. Levitt says that economics is nothing more than the study of incentives.

They explained that: “Changes in incentives influence human behavior in predictable ways”. The main point of this concept is that the more attractive an option is the more likely an individual to choose it. Another point that they also focused on was the fact that if a particular product more costly, the more unappealing it will become to the consumer. They used examples such as employees will worker harder if they feel that they will be greatly rewarded or a student will study material that they feel will be on an

Margaret Heffernan once said, “For good ideas and true innovation, you need a mix of human interaction, conflict, argument, and debate.” In the article it is debated if there is any benefit in monetary rewards for students. Teachers, and parents alike are always trying to find the best way to reward and inspire there students to do well in school. Matthew G Springer is a professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University. He is also the director of the National Center on Performance Incentives. He wrote this article to display his research and studies.

“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change anything”(Levitt 20). What professor Steven D. Levitt (a professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s dictum here is that the incentive has a lot of power in this world). And that the metaphor of comparing “incentives”to a bullet really speaks wonders to their strengths. They can change almost any situation by motivating someone to do something in a business situation, all the way to education fields. After many years of college, business and economics students are being taught how to be greedy in college. It is only a matter of time before greed is too powerful. Incentives and greed both have favorable and critical effects on individuals and the populace, but when connected together both can have dangerous effects on future selections.

Lastly, they explain the fundamental ideas of the book. Incentives are “means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing.”; according to the authors, they “are the cornerstone of modern life”. Levitt and Dubner also focus the book on the following concepts:

When explaining economics instead of using large over-complicated words, the authors simply state that “economics is, at root, the study of incentives.” Rather than utilizing economist argot, Levitt and Dubner describe economics in a way that makes it easier to understand and put into perspective. As the passage continues, the authors provide the audience with many relatable examples such as “if you break curfew you are grounded.” People respond to incentives, it’s the way our society works, “an incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing.” Like Levitt and Dubner previously stated, economics is the study of incentives and how it affects society and their decision making

2.1/2.2. Explain how children and young people’s development is influenced by a range of personal & external factors.

The overall problem of incentive misalignment cited above has negative impacts for almost all stakeholders in the healthcare industry. Consumers have become notoriously bad shoppers of healthcare, as they do not bear the real costs of their care or treatments and therefore have no incentive to optimize their healthcare costs. However, even if consumers were to become more shopping savvy, it would ultimately have a very limited impact on such a fragmented and opaque system where reliable and accessible information about relative pricing and outcomes is almost nonexistent. Nor are doctors immune to this incentive misalignment. Regulation and increased litigation around doctor malpractice has cemented an industry obsession with compliance

In the book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner note “An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often-tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation” (16). This is to showcase the amount of power an incentive can have over a person or a situation; either good or bad. Humans are found to use incentives when it comes to making daily decisions. Often, people need motives to proceed with their plans. Some tend to make either moral, social, or economic incentive. The moral incentive is about self-respect; keeping in check with what was taught to believe is right and wrong. The social incentive is how the public views the person; wanting to look good in front others. Economic incentive, however, would relate to monetary benefit. While all three incentives can affect people’s decisions, economic

As I read the article from the New York Times Newspaper titled, “Should you bribe your kids?” I immediately though about myself and my brother when we were kids, and how our parents would literally use the method of bribing or “rewarding” to “motivate” their lazy children at that time. Looking at what a Harvard economist, Roland Fryer Jr. have studied is quite shocking and unusual to me. I honestly wouldn’t be able to let my children go to school and study well only if they would get paid for it. I believe this is a bit extreme “motivation” to study.

They were able to control the curricula and everything about the entire learning experience along with conducting small scale complimentary experiments to better understand why the effects observed were happening. The hope was to determine which key skills children should acquire to prepare them for later success. The overarching theme in this experiment was that parents, teachers, and students from preschool to ninth grade were motivated to perform better when they were incentivized. Additionally, when students and teachers were provided with an incentive and threatened with the loss of the incentive, everyone preformed

Some were put into a group that mentioned a deadline while others were placed into a group that was able to take as much time as they desired. Results showed that even though both groups finished the puzzles in the given time, those who recieved a deadline were observed to have lost interest in the previously interesting word games (Amabile et al, 1976). This demonstrates that motive is strongly determined by whether the behaviour seems imposed on oneself or of their own will. In the case of a parent, punishment may work for a time, but as the child gains independence they will rebel in harmful ways. Behaviours healthy to the child will have negative connotation thereby causing harm to the child's

In its essence, an incentive is a deliberate proposal calculated to make a person choose a certain action. Thus, the reason why incentives are so popular in society is because everything and

A young child is like a tree, when given nourishment and a safe environment to grow in, they will become strong physically and mentally. Positively rewarded toddlers have more initiative to learn and tend to contribute more to society than their negatively rewarded counterparts. Children, who are neglected or ridiculed for their efforts, will experience their inner spirit and fire being extinguished. They also tend to have slower mental capabilities with little or no initiative. Negatively reinforced children are less willing to want to learn and thrive; they experience embarrassment, shame and guilt for their discoveries.