Quotes About Incentives

it is thought to be somehow related to Adam Smith's invisible hand, the workings of which are both overstated and mysterious.

By properly deploying both incentives and nudges, we can improve our ability to improve people's lives, and help solve many of society's major problems. And we can do so while still insisting on everyone's freedom to choose.

One way to start to think about incentives is to ask four questions about a particular choice architecture: Who uses? Who chooses? Who pays? Who profits?

A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates.

Outright bans on plastic bags may not be the best solution, but education and incentives to get people to stop using them are necessary.

Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.

When I asked the mayor if flood insurance rates had gone up after Sandy, he said, "Not really." This is how disaster relief works in America. There are lots of incentives to rebuild but few incentives to rebuild differently, much less to rethink the long-term future of cities and towns along the coast.

Why did anyone ever act beyond the scope of base self-interest?

Building a better mousetrap isn't always rewarded when the mice have a say in the matter

Increased government spending can provide a temporary stimulus to demand and output but in the longer run higher levels of government spending crowd out private investment or require higher taxes that weaken growth by reducing incentives to save, invest, innovate, and work.

Simplification of the tax code would not only unlock dormant economic potential, but, in the process, it would blunt the preferred weapon of social engineers, who reward favored industries, punish success and distort economic incentives.

The Microsoft actions announced today are exactly the kinds of industry initiatives we need. Microsoft is using its resources to bring real privacy protection to Internet users by creating incentives for more websites to provide strong privacy protection.

More climate-friendly, coordinated laws, policies, and incentives are needed.

There are many elements needed to secure economic growth. Certainly, people must be politically free to innovate, invest, build, and create things, and they must be incentivized to do so by knowing they can keep the rewards for their efforts.

Politicians like to talk about incentives - for businesses to relocate, for example, or to get folks to buy local.

I think that most of the people running companies today are motivated and pay is a small portion of the motivation.

Some people are in positions of power, and when incentives go haywire, we are all human and it's easy to make mistakes. I am not saying everybody is Bernie Madoff.

Pay your people the least possible and you'll get from them the same.

What drives 90 percent of stuff is not the small tactical decisions or the personal relationships but the big, macro political incentives.

Incentives are not strategy, they are tactics. Defensive measures.

Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.

Change Tactic: Directly link short-term rewards and punishments to the new habits you're trying to form, and you're far more likely to stay on track.

There exists no "invisible hand"—that was always an unfortunate turn of phrase—but billions of highly visible fingers, doing, purely for personal gain, what others will freely barter for, with the sole object of improving their lives and those of their children.

Money isn't always the best motivator. If you leave a $50 check after dinner with friends, you don't increase the probability of being invited back.