Quotes About Incentives

Positive market incentives operating in the public interest are too few and far between, and are also up against a seemingly never-ending expansion of perverse incentives and lobbying.

I know the problem of obesity. I got to tell you, I think that's tepid. I just don't think the bully pulpit is going to be enough to sufficiently fight obesity. We're going to have to have incentives in here.

Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking from a common pot but not contributing to it. Just to insure that shirkers get what they deserve, we are prepared to make ourselves poorer.

Years of research in psychology has shown that rewards and punishments can be very effective in changing behavior. But, at the same time, they can create an addiction to rewards and punishments.

If you pay your credit card off every month, get a rewards card. One that gives you airline miles or that will give you 1 percent cash back at least on every purchase.

Encourage your own curiosity; pursue the problems based on that. Don't get diverted by trying to do things for your own advancement. In other words, don't be lured into responding to incentives.

It's important to understand the compensation equation that a CEO and a founder has with his or her employees.

Economic desperation often drives wildlife destruction like poaching or illegal logging. But trade can help create powerful financial incentives for communities to preserve the biodiversity around them.

Lotteries are just one way to provide positive reinforcement. Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued.

Physicians today, as human beings, are not exempt from the perverse economic pressures created by fee-for-service regimes to see more patients for shorter appointments and order more tests and procedures. If the incentives were changed to pay to foster better health outcomes, I am convinced physician behavior would change over time.

Doctors and hospitals should be paid for keeping their patients well. Paying them for doing more tests and surgeries creates bad incentives.

People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.

The beginning is hard, [Levin] went on. By the end of the day they're restless. Part of it is endurance, part of it is motivation. Part of it is incentives and rewards and fun stuff. Part of it is good old-fashion discipline. You throw all of that into the stew. We talk a lot here about grit and self-control. The kids know what those words mean.

We have inadvertently designed a system in which being good at what you do as a teacher is not formally rewarded, while being poor at what you do is seldom corrected nor penalized.

We must be willing to pay inspiring math and science teachers, who have high paying alternatives in industry, more to teach and reward students who take more challenging courses in high school.

The reasons for the failure of the Leninist economic model have been studied thoroughly and in the case of North Korea they were essentially the same as elsewhere: distorted price information, lack of incentives for innovation and quality improvement, and an ingrained inability to handle data efficiently.

And here it is: the more you share profits with your associates—whether it's in salaries or incentives or bonuses or stock discounts—the more profit will accrue to the company. Why? Because the way management treats the associates is exactly how the associates will then treat the customers. And if the associates treat the customers well, the customers will return again and again, and that is where the real profit in this business lies

bribes are a big no-no unless you want a puppy who listens only when you're waving a big piece of chicken in your hand.

Congress was soon neck-deep in arrogant boobs whom Beaumarchais or Deane had promised high ranks and higher salaries. "Men cannot be engaged to quit their native country . . . in a cause which is not their own" is how Deane rationalized the incentives to Congress.

Economics graduate students are far more likely to free-ride than other students.

Economics, when you strip away the guff and the mathematical sophistry, is largely about incentives.

clear thinking find that unless people have some emotional reason to learn something, they do not learn it very well or at all. This is why tests are given—to motivate learners to have that thrill of a good score or distress of a poor one, and we have found that

It is always better to tax bad things than good things.

We want market-based, consumer-based reforms in health care. We want to give people incentives to make wise choices in a marketplace, not centralized choices and have government mandates and takeovers.