The Miami Heat's New Incentives
The Miami Heat has been on fire lately, with a 10-game winning streak. This was how things were supposed to go when the team put together its holy WadeBoshJames trinity, but the season didn’t start out so well.
The Miami Heat has been on fire lately, with a 10-game winning streak. This was how things were supposed to go when the team put together its holy WadeBoshJames trinity, but the season didn’t start out so well.
We recently published a post about the dramatic decline in U.S. fire deaths over the past century. A reader named Tricia Hurlbutt writes in with a related challenge.
U.S. auto sales are looking a bit better this year. Trucks in particular are doing well. But one category is moving in the opposite direction. Why? Some blame has to go to the fall in gas prices from a peak of more than $4 a gallon. That’s right: it’s the tiny, gas-stingy cars that aren’t moving off the lot.
Is it likely that we’ll follow the perfectly rational incentives designed by benevolent governmental guardians to reduce obesity? Fat chance.
Delhi’s Blueline buses are notoriously deadly, perhaps due to a perverse incentive system that rewarded drivers for speedy progress and discouraged investments in the vehicles.
When I stated on this blog that I was hoping to run the NY marathon in under four hours, I was hoping that my public commitment would spur me on. And it did. Sort of. I ran under four hours – 3:54:59 to be precise – which I’m thrilled by. So score one for Ian Ayres and the value of public commitments.
A few years back, a Freakonomics reader named Stephanie Downs wrote in with an idea: bribing people (with cash, gift certificates etc.) to spay or neuter their pets. “I found your story about the [Israeli] daycares very interesting,” she wrote. “I want to do the research upfront on what will motivate people instead of spending years finding the right formula.”
The music entrepreneur Derek Sivers gave a TED Talk with the provocative claim that you’re more likely to reach your goals if you keep them secret.
“The honeymoon is over.” These are the words of Alberto Iturra, the leader of a team of psychologists who have instituted a series of prizes and punishments to change the behavior of the 33 miners trapped in Chile. When the miners do what the psychologists want, they are given treats like T.V. and music. But if miners refuse, say, to submit to daily interviews with psychologists, the psychologists will restrict the supply of cigarettes or wine.
The results are in. I’m happy to report that my eBay auction ended with a winning bid of $282.85. Twenty-three bidders put in a total of 45 bids. The bidders were a mixture of seasoned eBay users (some with more than 150 eBay purchases) and newbie eBay users.
I was a little scared to get on the scale this morning. I had eaten copious amounts this weekend – including a quarter pounder at McDonalds. But my fear was heightened because I knew that my weight would be automatically tweeted at twitter.com/ianweight.
An unusual auction began late yesterday on eBay. I’m selling my “right to regain weight.” Why would anyone in their right mind be willing to pay me cash to buy this right? What does this even mean?
My eleventh book, Carrots and Sticks: Unlock the Power of Incentives to Get Things Done, has just been published. It is centrally about how to craft incentives and commitments to help you and others accomplish your goals.
I asked my Turkish teaching assistant, a first-year Ph.D. student, what he’s doing about compulsory military service. To simplify, he is only liable for six months of service as a university graduate, instead of the usual one year; and if he stays here for three years or more, he can further delay service.
I had a wild morning in Boston a few days ago – participating in a satellite media tour for the launch of the Staples “stickK to it!” Business Challenge. (I sat in a studio and was serially plugged into about 20 local radio and TV shows … grueling, but efficient). The “Challenge” is a way to help small businesses and entrepreneurs reach their professional goals.
Self-control mechanisms restrict one’s choices, which one think might think reduces utility; but they raise lifetime utility by helping to overcome addiction.
One problem faced by a society that is always working toward solutions to various problems is that certain solutions, however effective, may go unused because they cannot be commodified.
Whenever you write a book, it’s interesting to see which parts of it people respond to en masse. With SuperFreakonomics, the global-warming chapter has certainly gotten its fair share of attention, and Levitt noted a lot of feedback about the perils of drunk walking.
Some time ago, we wondered if New York City’s new law requiring certain restaurants to post calorie counts might provide good material for academic researchers who careabout obesity.
The answer: yes!
The average American spends about one hour at meals, and about the same time grazing– eating as a secondary activity to something else (very often leisure). But how does this differ across the population? Those whose time is valuable — who have a high wage — have an incentive to multi-task, to graze rather than devote their full time to meals.
A reader named Christopher Rumney writes in with an interesting idea for how to discourage illicit performance-enhancing drugs in pro sports. Perhaps something like this has already been proposed, but I’ve not heard of it, and it’s certainly an interesting idea — although any players’ union in its right mind would likely rather blow itself up than submit.
Fight spam by donating to your favorite charity. That’s how researchers at Yahoo are hoping to convince people to put a virtual one-cent stamp on their outgoing e-mails. Sending a penny-stamped e-mail through Yahoo’s (not yet released) CentMail program would automatically mark it as “real mail” and get it past any spam filters.
Edward Glaeser (over at the Economix blog) and I are doing a few posts on the high-speed rail (HSR) component of the economic stimulus package (find the first post here). HSR promises to reduce carbon emissions, but so does the other hot transportation policy at the moment, Cash for Clunkers (CFC). Under CFC the federal government is providing rebates to consumers who trade in their vehicles for new ones that get better gas mileage. Which program is the more effective way to cool down the ice caps while heating up the economy?
Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. Classes start in three weeks, and the bosses have mandated a revolution at UT-Austin: We can no longer give only A, B, C grades, but must give +/- grades too, such as A, A-, B+, etc. With 600 students this Fall, I can imagine a big change in griping.
Two French firefighters admitted to starting brush fires on the island of Corsica on July 8 and July 14. Their motivation: overtime bonus pay of 19 euros for nighttime work (July 8) and 38 euros on July 14, for Bastille Day.
USA Today had a poll asking people, “Would you fly on airlines that charge for access to the restroom?” Most respondents said no, but I bet that people wouldn’t let this bother them, they wouldn’t alter their flight plans, and they would pay for use of the toilet.
Pricing the bathroom would reduce the quantity demanded; some people would wait and race off the plane to the airport bathrooms (unless airports started charging also). But I would think that the demand for using a plane’s bathrooms is fairly inelastic, so that — except on short flights — behavior wouldn’t change very much.
Incentives, or nudges, to get people to do things — like donate organs, lose weight, and pick up dog feces — are everywhere; some work better than others. Here are a few that various Flickr users have come across: