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Castle Lecture Series
The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens
Why do policies and business practices that ignore the moral and generous side of human nature often fail?
Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus —determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire.
But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.
Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus —determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire.
But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published May 24, 2016
80 people are currently reading
1333 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Bowles
72 books73 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
Samuel Bowles is Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena. He is coauthor of Notes and Problems in Microeconomic Theory (North Holland Texts in Mathematical Economics) and Schooling in Capitalist America (Basic Books), and has published articles, most recently, in the American Economic Review, Nature, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
Samuel Bowles is Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena. He is coauthor of Notes and Problems in Microeconomic Theory (North Holland Texts in Mathematical Economics) and Schooling in Capitalist America (Basic Books), and has published articles, most recently, in the American Economic Review, Nature, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
March 16, 2019
The overarching argument of The Moral Economy is that people are motivated by more than just greed, specifically by a sense of what is fair and just. Moreover, encouraging a greater focus on greed can actually lead them to behave in a less fair and just manner. If markets and information were perfect that would not be a problem and greed would be sufficient for efficient outcomes. But in Samuel Bowles’ telling they are not so that by “crowding out” moral motives over-reliance on market mechanisms can lead to worse outcomes. Bowles is completely convincing that all of this is true but disappointingly unconvincing that it is important or that he knows what to do about it. As such, this is a worthwhile perspective to understand, an idea that should be pursued further, but I’m not sure how much it informs just about any public policy issue I really care about.
A lot of Bowles’ argument is compelling and is less a critique of the “textbook economics” that he sometimes rails against than it is a summary and extension of it. Strikingly for someone who started out as a Marxist economist in the early 1970s, the featured example in this book is the same as the one in Freakonomics: the Haifa day care centers which tried out a fine to deter parental lateness but found that it resulted in even more lateness as parents went from feeling guilty about being late to pick up their children to rationally calculating that it was actually quite cheap daycare.
The analysis itself draws much from standard research on behavioral economics, incomplete contracts (which make it impossible to specify every contingency and thus require something else, like trust, to avoid an inferior outcome), and mechanism design (which often finds that it is impossible to design incentives so that rational people will collectively lead to efficient outcomes)—all of which have won Nobel prizes in economics in recent years, hardly a buried set of heterodox notions. (Bowles often has an interesting set of perspectives and interpretations of this research. For example, he argues that most of the major results are “negative,” ways in which it does not work, and posits a trilemma that it is impossible to have Pareto efficiency, voluntary participation and preference neutrality.)
Bowles is particularly detailed in describing much of his own work on experiments running various games to understand when cooperation emerges. For example, in the prisoner’s dilemma it is rational for each player not to cooperate so as to get a better outcome for themselves, but Bowles points out about half of the time people playing the game in lab conditions actually do cooperate. He tries to understand what makes this cooperation more or less likely.
I see three overarching problems in Bowles’ analysis:
First, as a general matter it may not be the case that markets crowd out trust and moral behavior but can in fact crowd it in. Bowles himself cites research showing that CEOs show more trusting behavior in experiments, diplomats from highly capitalist economies are less likely to run up parking tickets than those from less capitalist ones, and East Germans play experimental exhibit less cooperative behavior than West Germans. It turns out that the security of property rights really does seem to motivate people to behave in a better manner than if they are afraid that their goods can be confiscated at any moments.
Second, Bowles has lots of tiny examples of where his approach matters but no big ones. The Haifa daycare center should have used moral suasion instead of fines. To discourage overuse of plastic bags you should reward people for bringing their own bag rather than just punishing them for not bringing one. These seem fine, but they are mostly very local examples and pale in comparison to the importance of the triumphs of “textbook” economics—for example the idea of a carbon tax, cigarette taxes, or the need to regulate fisheries to prevent overfishing. Bowles does not have a compelling argument against any of these (even though, in his theory, a carbon tax could be counterproductive because it gives permission to pollute rather than counting on people’s caring for the greater good to restrain their behavior).
Third, Bowles gives no compelling way in which the government can inculcate the trust and morality he wants. It is clear how small communities, like daycare centers, can do this. But do we want the state to impose morality on all of us? Which morality would it pick? How do we decide? The one case he does show that this morality works is that by protecting property rights and cementing a certain notion of fairness (which might involve some redistribution and less inequality), it leads people to be more trusting and reduces the inefficiencies that might otherwise result from incomplete contracts and the limitations of mechanism design.
It is notable that behavioral economics, which is really what this book is, has had many of the same problems, including how to translate the many anomalies it has documented into general propositions about behavior and recommendations for large-scale public policy. These are still fruitful avenues for pursuit. The empirical mindset of testing incentives and different ways to frame them is clearly right and completely standard in economics today. Behavioral considerations are clearly important in the details of program design. But I will be more sympathetic to the arguments against the textbooks when this approach can show that it can go beyond lab experiments and boutique examples to some bigger, implementable ideas.
A lot of Bowles’ argument is compelling and is less a critique of the “textbook economics” that he sometimes rails against than it is a summary and extension of it. Strikingly for someone who started out as a Marxist economist in the early 1970s, the featured example in this book is the same as the one in Freakonomics: the Haifa day care centers which tried out a fine to deter parental lateness but found that it resulted in even more lateness as parents went from feeling guilty about being late to pick up their children to rationally calculating that it was actually quite cheap daycare.
The analysis itself draws much from standard research on behavioral economics, incomplete contracts (which make it impossible to specify every contingency and thus require something else, like trust, to avoid an inferior outcome), and mechanism design (which often finds that it is impossible to design incentives so that rational people will collectively lead to efficient outcomes)—all of which have won Nobel prizes in economics in recent years, hardly a buried set of heterodox notions. (Bowles often has an interesting set of perspectives and interpretations of this research. For example, he argues that most of the major results are “negative,” ways in which it does not work, and posits a trilemma that it is impossible to have Pareto efficiency, voluntary participation and preference neutrality.)
Bowles is particularly detailed in describing much of his own work on experiments running various games to understand when cooperation emerges. For example, in the prisoner’s dilemma it is rational for each player not to cooperate so as to get a better outcome for themselves, but Bowles points out about half of the time people playing the game in lab conditions actually do cooperate. He tries to understand what makes this cooperation more or less likely.
I see three overarching problems in Bowles’ analysis:
First, as a general matter it may not be the case that markets crowd out trust and moral behavior but can in fact crowd it in. Bowles himself cites research showing that CEOs show more trusting behavior in experiments, diplomats from highly capitalist economies are less likely to run up parking tickets than those from less capitalist ones, and East Germans play experimental exhibit less cooperative behavior than West Germans. It turns out that the security of property rights really does seem to motivate people to behave in a better manner than if they are afraid that their goods can be confiscated at any moments.
Second, Bowles has lots of tiny examples of where his approach matters but no big ones. The Haifa daycare center should have used moral suasion instead of fines. To discourage overuse of plastic bags you should reward people for bringing their own bag rather than just punishing them for not bringing one. These seem fine, but they are mostly very local examples and pale in comparison to the importance of the triumphs of “textbook” economics—for example the idea of a carbon tax, cigarette taxes, or the need to regulate fisheries to prevent overfishing. Bowles does not have a compelling argument against any of these (even though, in his theory, a carbon tax could be counterproductive because it gives permission to pollute rather than counting on people’s caring for the greater good to restrain their behavior).
Third, Bowles gives no compelling way in which the government can inculcate the trust and morality he wants. It is clear how small communities, like daycare centers, can do this. But do we want the state to impose morality on all of us? Which morality would it pick? How do we decide? The one case he does show that this morality works is that by protecting property rights and cementing a certain notion of fairness (which might involve some redistribution and less inequality), it leads people to be more trusting and reduces the inefficiencies that might otherwise result from incomplete contracts and the limitations of mechanism design.
It is notable that behavioral economics, which is really what this book is, has had many of the same problems, including how to translate the many anomalies it has documented into general propositions about behavior and recommendations for large-scale public policy. These are still fruitful avenues for pursuit. The empirical mindset of testing incentives and different ways to frame them is clearly right and completely standard in economics today. Behavioral considerations are clearly important in the details of program design. But I will be more sympathetic to the arguments against the textbooks when this approach can show that it can go beyond lab experiments and boutique examples to some bigger, implementable ideas.
April 30, 2016
Ignore morals and the generous side of human nature at your own risk is the key takeaway point of the author in this fascinating look at the so-called moral economy. Contrary to what we may believe, we might not be as mercenary and self-interested as we may imagine, particularly when there is a more ethical or generous alternative available that does not automatically place us in a lesser position through its choice.
Thinking in a more open, considerate manner about our fellow man, our suppliers, our customers or even those we “preside over” (if we are politicians) may be a much better, longer-term solution. You can get more with a spoonful of sugar instead of a spoonful of salt, to quote a folk saying.
This book is not the result of a sudden overnight conclusion: the author admits that it has been in the making for nearly three decades if everything is considered, in part since he had a “lot to learn” along the way. Any delay, in any case, has yielded an excellent, informative book that is not a dry read likely to appeal only to academics in a certain narrow niche. It is a book for everyone, capable of giving a lot to many, dependent on individual needs. The clear headline message is certainly hard to ignore!
Actions taken may have short-term benefits, or so it seems, yet do they really benefit in the longer-term or change any behaviour that may be viewed as undesirable? The author gives an example of a fire department in Boston, USA where suspicions emerged around the coincidental timing of many sick calls. Instead of offering unlimited paid sick leave, a much restricted amount of paid leave was introduced with docked pay for any additional leave. The result? Sick calls on Christmas and New Year’s Day rose tenfold year-on-year. Action escalated and holiday bonus cheques were cancelled. Viewed over a year afterwards, sickness levels had more than doubled despite the harsher penalties, with the author contending that many firemen, apparently insulted by the new system, abused it or abandoned their previous ethic of serving the public even when injured or not feeling well, with the conclusion being that are incentives and constraints enough to induce people to act in an accepted or responsible way. No, is the answer, so it seems. The author wonders whether a much larger penalty would have worked but how much is how much remains unanswered and it could lead to an arms raise where perhaps nobody wins. Looking at the reasons behind the issue and trying to resolve them may be better medicine.
This was an enjoyable book but it would have benefitted from a tighter edit, making it easier for the general reader to immerse themselves into along the way. Waiting a little longer for the book to be polished to perfection wouldn’t have been unreasonable, especially since there’s been a near 30-year wait already. It may have transformed it from a “good performer” to an “excellent all-rounder”.
Thinking in a more open, considerate manner about our fellow man, our suppliers, our customers or even those we “preside over” (if we are politicians) may be a much better, longer-term solution. You can get more with a spoonful of sugar instead of a spoonful of salt, to quote a folk saying.
This book is not the result of a sudden overnight conclusion: the author admits that it has been in the making for nearly three decades if everything is considered, in part since he had a “lot to learn” along the way. Any delay, in any case, has yielded an excellent, informative book that is not a dry read likely to appeal only to academics in a certain narrow niche. It is a book for everyone, capable of giving a lot to many, dependent on individual needs. The clear headline message is certainly hard to ignore!
Actions taken may have short-term benefits, or so it seems, yet do they really benefit in the longer-term or change any behaviour that may be viewed as undesirable? The author gives an example of a fire department in Boston, USA where suspicions emerged around the coincidental timing of many sick calls. Instead of offering unlimited paid sick leave, a much restricted amount of paid leave was introduced with docked pay for any additional leave. The result? Sick calls on Christmas and New Year’s Day rose tenfold year-on-year. Action escalated and holiday bonus cheques were cancelled. Viewed over a year afterwards, sickness levels had more than doubled despite the harsher penalties, with the author contending that many firemen, apparently insulted by the new system, abused it or abandoned their previous ethic of serving the public even when injured or not feeling well, with the conclusion being that are incentives and constraints enough to induce people to act in an accepted or responsible way. No, is the answer, so it seems. The author wonders whether a much larger penalty would have worked but how much is how much remains unanswered and it could lead to an arms raise where perhaps nobody wins. Looking at the reasons behind the issue and trying to resolve them may be better medicine.
This was an enjoyable book but it would have benefitted from a tighter edit, making it easier for the general reader to immerse themselves into along the way. Waiting a little longer for the book to be polished to perfection wouldn’t have been unreasonable, especially since there’s been a near 30-year wait already. It may have transformed it from a “good performer” to an “excellent all-rounder”.
May 27, 2018
Deep insight
Well researched and well written. A convincing argument why we need morality and trust in a market economy. The book explains how, with private information, it is impossible to design a system for trade that achieves (1) Pareto optimally, (2) voluntary participation, and (3) neutrality of preferences. In simple terms, Pareto optimality and individualism, in general, are incompatible. The result is incomplete contracts. In an incomplete world, insisting on completing the market crowds out trust and social norms, making things even worse. It is a deep argument that needs some reflection. The book is worth the time and effort.
Well researched and well written. A convincing argument why we need morality and trust in a market economy. The book explains how, with private information, it is impossible to design a system for trade that achieves (1) Pareto optimally, (2) voluntary participation, and (3) neutrality of preferences. In simple terms, Pareto optimality and individualism, in general, are incompatible. The result is incomplete contracts. In an incomplete world, insisting on completing the market crowds out trust and social norms, making things even worse. It is a deep argument that needs some reflection. The book is worth the time and effort.
December 28, 2016
The 1993 federal election in Australia was, amongst other things, a clash between two party leaders inclined to economic language. The Labor Prime Minister, a self-taught man with a talent for acerbic jabs at his opposition is still known for his comment that you could "back self-interest, because it's always trying. The Liberal leader of the opposition, a similar kind of personality, was a trained economist and one-time professor of economics. His party had used the term "incentivation" as a theme for an election platform in the decade beforehand, but nobody appeared to know what it meant.
The language of incentives, however expressed, continues to be part of the political language of Australia, with presumptions that corporate tax cuts give businesses the incentive to employ others, that those who run privatised utilities witl want to avoid fines for non-compliance with agreed targets, that senior managers and executives need bonuses as incentives for them to perform well and so on.
The evidence for such presumptions is limited to say the least as is evidence for a corollary for the unemployed that all they need is motivation to get a job and if they don't get one then it can only be for that lack, not any social issues or even the lack of jobs. "Self-interest" can mean that profits triumph over social issues. A local privatised/for profit office intended to assist, or really monitor, the unemployed has had no receptionist for around 18 months, apparently because they're not making enough profit.
These kind of events made this book an attractive purchase, particularly given a personal lack of understanding of the logic of economic thought., which didn't seem to relate to anyone I knew, or of most anything I observed. I took Economics 101 in 1970 at university and found it interesting, if hard to grasp, as it was a different language – English, but it could have been Latin, although I was more familiar with that.
At any rate, I didn't last the semester out (for all sorts of reasons) and when I returned 7 years later to start again, there were other, more interesting/relevant options, particularly for a student who didn't have any goal in mind other than to learn something and actually complete a degree qualification.
There's something about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation here that is pertinent, although it's not something that appears to cross Bowles' radar.
To me, it's obvious that incentives or rewards are a dubious proposition (Bowles calls them "pay-offs"), and so I wanted him to explain to me reasons why this obviousness is the case. The whole issue of punishment and reward has been debated for a while, whether it's Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" – based on prisons but applied to organisations and government policies to some effect, particularly with social welfare strategies, or Alfie Kohn's Punishment by Rewards of over 20 years ago, based on research in educational settings and apparently the capacity to annoy the corporate world because he identified a problem, but not a solution. As an aside, this kind of logic has always escaped me, as finding a solution is clearly a different process to finding flaws for a number of reasons, and I suspect that many problems have gone unresolved because of such cognitive pig-headedness (that's the way it seems to me, anyway).
Bowles starts off interestingly, presenting ideas from classical Greece, notably Aristotle, and then dragging in Hume and Machiavelli, as well as the usual Adam Smith, whose works seem to be treated as gospel, but without much reflection or context. Here Bowles has a particular turn on Smith's "invisible hand" that appears to be still in the realm of economic fundamentalism, in that you can be a believer without having consulted the sacred texts in any depth. This may be unfair, but Bowles references Debra Satz as a discussant, notwithstanding her explanation of Smith in Why Things Should Not Be For Sale is much more nuanced amid grounded in Smith's experience.
Bowles litters his text with talk of "preferences" without really saying what they are. If you're a person familiar with the jargon of personality type, economics is the probable origin of the term and not Jung or anyone else. Here, the personality aspect is constricted to vague attestations of this kind and if the reader is interested in knowing more about personal volition it won't be found here.
Bowles' method for presenting his case is through a succession of "experiments" conducted by himself, other economists, psychologists and also anthropologists. These experiments are games, associated with game theory. These are accompanied by diagrams and charts, which I confess are not methods that are of assistance to me.
I realise these kinds of activities fit in with the logical positivism associated with economics and psychology, even neuroscience, as well as social science methodologies, but I've never found these kinds of exercises, games or role plays remotely convincing, particularly if imposed on indigenous cultures as in a few examples here, because that brings up the issue of how and why the group is responding to the researchers – it could be a joke to them for instance and there are published instances of these groups humouring anthropologists, telling them what it's thought they want to hear. I've seen this in group activity among consulting professionals . Then again, that might be covered in the initial research publication.
The samples may be dubious in several cases. To his credit Bowles recognises problems with groups of students not necessarily being representative of the population at large, without addressing issues of age or the study undertaken. Donald Mackenzie has indicated a problem with games of this kind when they are played by those not studying money-associated subjects.
At any rate, Bowles provides what seem fairly narrow interpretations of these scenarios/games. He gathers other economists in support, in a kind of conclave of narrowness, although this is intended to be convincing. For instance, he suggests particular reasons for a second person in one of these groups to agree with what a first person has said, without considering that the agreement may come out of the context being set by the first person. In groups, people often seem to look for cues from others
What are interesting, however, are the discussions of actual events, when incentives in the form of fines were applied to work groups and parent groups. Bowles starts here, and these examples grabbed my interest, but the forays into experiments and the concentration on them, as if they were fact, or even proved anything at all really stopped this momentum for me.
The last pages brought back some of that early interest, although by that time I was dodging aropund the other stuff and getting annoyed with all the sentences that started with "Recall", partly because I didn't, but also because I dislike that kind of language expression – it appears too aggressive or abrupt, perhaps, I don't know. But it shuts my thinking doe=wn, rather than opening it up. I realise it's a standard mode of American expression, but I think it's poor English and not an effective way to communicate. Perhaps it's "efficient" because there are fewer words, who knows? I'm totally bewildered, anyway.
I've given this book a reasonable rating because I think it must be useful to someone, possibly those wedded to this kind of thinking. It's obviously well-thought out but I may not be the relevant audience.
I'm going to finish with a couple of personal examples of incentives, or rewards, to provoke a bit of thought and also to indicate where I would have liked this book to go.
I was a quiet, precocious child in primary school, nearly always in the top 3, The nuns who taught me used to give out books as prizes, which I liked. I was never motivated by this, it was just something that happened. In Grade 6 (the school went to year 7/8) the nun teaching thought that as we were a Catholic school, we should be rewarded with holy pictures and the like, which disappointed the whole class greatly. One of my best friends at the time was promised a bicycle if he came first and so beat me, which he subsequently did, although I didn't know this until after the event. I thought the bribe of the bike was an unconscionable act by his parents (why didn't they just give him a bike?), but it was a clear incentive to him and I understand he worked hard for it, whereas I just drifted along, coming 5th.
My father was in an area of work where the companies that employed him usually gave out cash bonuses every Christmas to its staff. I never knew how much it was, but there was pleasure associated with it and it probably assisted the holidays had as children. So it was a motivatio0n or incentive, but also expected by staff. Possibly it augmented a wage that wasn't that high, and when the bonus was stopped it caused my father some distress, obviously for financial reasons, but I wondered whether that would affect his motivation, loyalty, trust etc.
I don't know the answer to that and I would have liked to see example like I've given, of real people in real circumstances, rather than reading about economists, psychologists and the like playing games and calling it useful research. But then they'd have to have a theory of personality attached or at least a relevant discussion.
The language of incentives, however expressed, continues to be part of the political language of Australia, with presumptions that corporate tax cuts give businesses the incentive to employ others, that those who run privatised utilities witl want to avoid fines for non-compliance with agreed targets, that senior managers and executives need bonuses as incentives for them to perform well and so on.
The evidence for such presumptions is limited to say the least as is evidence for a corollary for the unemployed that all they need is motivation to get a job and if they don't get one then it can only be for that lack, not any social issues or even the lack of jobs. "Self-interest" can mean that profits triumph over social issues. A local privatised/for profit office intended to assist, or really monitor, the unemployed has had no receptionist for around 18 months, apparently because they're not making enough profit.
These kind of events made this book an attractive purchase, particularly given a personal lack of understanding of the logic of economic thought., which didn't seem to relate to anyone I knew, or of most anything I observed. I took Economics 101 in 1970 at university and found it interesting, if hard to grasp, as it was a different language – English, but it could have been Latin, although I was more familiar with that.
At any rate, I didn't last the semester out (for all sorts of reasons) and when I returned 7 years later to start again, there were other, more interesting/relevant options, particularly for a student who didn't have any goal in mind other than to learn something and actually complete a degree qualification.
There's something about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation here that is pertinent, although it's not something that appears to cross Bowles' radar.
To me, it's obvious that incentives or rewards are a dubious proposition (Bowles calls them "pay-offs"), and so I wanted him to explain to me reasons why this obviousness is the case. The whole issue of punishment and reward has been debated for a while, whether it's Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" – based on prisons but applied to organisations and government policies to some effect, particularly with social welfare strategies, or Alfie Kohn's Punishment by Rewards of over 20 years ago, based on research in educational settings and apparently the capacity to annoy the corporate world because he identified a problem, but not a solution. As an aside, this kind of logic has always escaped me, as finding a solution is clearly a different process to finding flaws for a number of reasons, and I suspect that many problems have gone unresolved because of such cognitive pig-headedness (that's the way it seems to me, anyway).
Bowles starts off interestingly, presenting ideas from classical Greece, notably Aristotle, and then dragging in Hume and Machiavelli, as well as the usual Adam Smith, whose works seem to be treated as gospel, but without much reflection or context. Here Bowles has a particular turn on Smith's "invisible hand" that appears to be still in the realm of economic fundamentalism, in that you can be a believer without having consulted the sacred texts in any depth. This may be unfair, but Bowles references Debra Satz as a discussant, notwithstanding her explanation of Smith in Why Things Should Not Be For Sale is much more nuanced amid grounded in Smith's experience.
Bowles litters his text with talk of "preferences" without really saying what they are. If you're a person familiar with the jargon of personality type, economics is the probable origin of the term and not Jung or anyone else. Here, the personality aspect is constricted to vague attestations of this kind and if the reader is interested in knowing more about personal volition it won't be found here.
Bowles' method for presenting his case is through a succession of "experiments" conducted by himself, other economists, psychologists and also anthropologists. These experiments are games, associated with game theory. These are accompanied by diagrams and charts, which I confess are not methods that are of assistance to me.
I realise these kinds of activities fit in with the logical positivism associated with economics and psychology, even neuroscience, as well as social science methodologies, but I've never found these kinds of exercises, games or role plays remotely convincing, particularly if imposed on indigenous cultures as in a few examples here, because that brings up the issue of how and why the group is responding to the researchers – it could be a joke to them for instance and there are published instances of these groups humouring anthropologists, telling them what it's thought they want to hear. I've seen this in group activity among consulting professionals . Then again, that might be covered in the initial research publication.
The samples may be dubious in several cases. To his credit Bowles recognises problems with groups of students not necessarily being representative of the population at large, without addressing issues of age or the study undertaken. Donald Mackenzie has indicated a problem with games of this kind when they are played by those not studying money-associated subjects.
At any rate, Bowles provides what seem fairly narrow interpretations of these scenarios/games. He gathers other economists in support, in a kind of conclave of narrowness, although this is intended to be convincing. For instance, he suggests particular reasons for a second person in one of these groups to agree with what a first person has said, without considering that the agreement may come out of the context being set by the first person. In groups, people often seem to look for cues from others
What are interesting, however, are the discussions of actual events, when incentives in the form of fines were applied to work groups and parent groups. Bowles starts here, and these examples grabbed my interest, but the forays into experiments and the concentration on them, as if they were fact, or even proved anything at all really stopped this momentum for me.
The last pages brought back some of that early interest, although by that time I was dodging aropund the other stuff and getting annoyed with all the sentences that started with "Recall", partly because I didn't, but also because I dislike that kind of language expression – it appears too aggressive or abrupt, perhaps, I don't know. But it shuts my thinking doe=wn, rather than opening it up. I realise it's a standard mode of American expression, but I think it's poor English and not an effective way to communicate. Perhaps it's "efficient" because there are fewer words, who knows? I'm totally bewildered, anyway.
I've given this book a reasonable rating because I think it must be useful to someone, possibly those wedded to this kind of thinking. It's obviously well-thought out but I may not be the relevant audience.
I'm going to finish with a couple of personal examples of incentives, or rewards, to provoke a bit of thought and also to indicate where I would have liked this book to go.
I was a quiet, precocious child in primary school, nearly always in the top 3, The nuns who taught me used to give out books as prizes, which I liked. I was never motivated by this, it was just something that happened. In Grade 6 (the school went to year 7/8) the nun teaching thought that as we were a Catholic school, we should be rewarded with holy pictures and the like, which disappointed the whole class greatly. One of my best friends at the time was promised a bicycle if he came first and so beat me, which he subsequently did, although I didn't know this until after the event. I thought the bribe of the bike was an unconscionable act by his parents (why didn't they just give him a bike?), but it was a clear incentive to him and I understand he worked hard for it, whereas I just drifted along, coming 5th.
My father was in an area of work where the companies that employed him usually gave out cash bonuses every Christmas to its staff. I never knew how much it was, but there was pleasure associated with it and it probably assisted the holidays had as children. So it was a motivatio0n or incentive, but also expected by staff. Possibly it augmented a wage that wasn't that high, and when the bonus was stopped it caused my father some distress, obviously for financial reasons, but I wondered whether that would affect his motivation, loyalty, trust etc.
I don't know the answer to that and I would have liked to see example like I've given, of real people in real circumstances, rather than reading about economists, psychologists and the like playing games and calling it useful research. But then they'd have to have a theory of personality attached or at least a relevant discussion.
January 20, 2019
Bowles draws from an impressive range of scholarship (economics, philosophy, political theory, psychology) to argue that it is dangerously misguided to organize our society on the assumption that humans are primarily motivated by self-interest. Policy tools based on this conceptualization of human nature are highly fallible, and worse, can crowd out our ethical and other-regarding motivations. First, Bowles skewers the use of "homo economicus" as the dominant behavioural model for policy development and governance. He then moves on to demonstrate the incompatibility of Pareto optimality and individualism.
Overall, he persuasively advances the argument that people are fundamentally other-regarding, and deeply concerned with issues of fairness. We aren't just self-important hogs!! "Homo economicus" characterizes individuals as rational actors who will always pursue whatever options will maximize outcomes for personal gain. Bowles thinks that relying on this particular behavioural model is flawed for two main reasons: a) it assumes that a universal amoral selfishness is more true than it otherwise might be (people sometimes act in more self-interested ways in the presence of incentives than in their absence); and b) because fines, rewards, and other material inducements to certain behaviours are not only unreliable, but can sometimes be counter-productive, or even backfire. His claim that the use of market-type incentives can crowd out ethical reasoning and the desire to aid others seems akin to Marxist criticisms of capitalist culture, and how the marketization of our relationships fundamentally corrupts their nature. But Bowles sees a heartening resilience in our capacity to care, and act, with the interests of others in mind absent any material inducement to do so.
There's a lot of experimental data here to back his claims, though, of course, some of the study results are more contested than others; and it can be a bit technical at times for a non-academic like me. I also found that he leaves quite a few questions hanging, and pays little attention to causal mechanisms. Sometimes this leads to frustratingly open questions such as why incentives crowd-out social norms in some cases, but strengthen them in others. More attention to these questions would have really strengthened his overall project.
Fundamentally, Bowles develops a cogent case for dislodging the incentive/constraint model of shaping social and economic relationships. People may be motivated by self-interest in some cases, but we also engage in deliberative processes that produce moral and other-regarding judgements and behaviours. Deliberation can also evoke a such a strong concern for fairness that we disregard material gain (for ex. "The Ultimatum Game" from behavioural economics). Good policies are those that support valued ends not only by harnessing self-interest but by eliciting, and cultivating, pro-social and public-spirited motives. Bowels presents us with ample and recent evidence that other-regarding and ethical motivations are common across many different populations. Most, in fact. Consequently the utopian-seeming project of reorganizing society as he suggests feels, well, (kinda, sorta, maybe) within reach.
Overall, he persuasively advances the argument that people are fundamentally other-regarding, and deeply concerned with issues of fairness. We aren't just self-important hogs!! "Homo economicus" characterizes individuals as rational actors who will always pursue whatever options will maximize outcomes for personal gain. Bowles thinks that relying on this particular behavioural model is flawed for two main reasons: a) it assumes that a universal amoral selfishness is more true than it otherwise might be (people sometimes act in more self-interested ways in the presence of incentives than in their absence); and b) because fines, rewards, and other material inducements to certain behaviours are not only unreliable, but can sometimes be counter-productive, or even backfire. His claim that the use of market-type incentives can crowd out ethical reasoning and the desire to aid others seems akin to Marxist criticisms of capitalist culture, and how the marketization of our relationships fundamentally corrupts their nature. But Bowles sees a heartening resilience in our capacity to care, and act, with the interests of others in mind absent any material inducement to do so.
There's a lot of experimental data here to back his claims, though, of course, some of the study results are more contested than others; and it can be a bit technical at times for a non-academic like me. I also found that he leaves quite a few questions hanging, and pays little attention to causal mechanisms. Sometimes this leads to frustratingly open questions such as why incentives crowd-out social norms in some cases, but strengthen them in others. More attention to these questions would have really strengthened his overall project.
Fundamentally, Bowles develops a cogent case for dislodging the incentive/constraint model of shaping social and economic relationships. People may be motivated by self-interest in some cases, but we also engage in deliberative processes that produce moral and other-regarding judgements and behaviours. Deliberation can also evoke a such a strong concern for fairness that we disregard material gain (for ex. "The Ultimatum Game" from behavioural economics). Good policies are those that support valued ends not only by harnessing self-interest but by eliciting, and cultivating, pro-social and public-spirited motives. Bowels presents us with ample and recent evidence that other-regarding and ethical motivations are common across many different populations. Most, in fact. Consequently the utopian-seeming project of reorganizing society as he suggests feels, well, (kinda, sorta, maybe) within reach.
March 2, 2017
This was an extremely painful read for me as I am sure I am not the target audience, I have no background in economics and have never taken an academic course on economics, so a lot of the language was above my understanding... Google came in handy for a quick look up of terminology as I read. And the author was excessively repeative, which when reading something I had to push myself through, the lengthy, over done repetition of points that could be summed up in one sentence, were excruciating. That being said, there was some great moments of clarity in this book and food for thought that can be applied not only to politics but to every day situations of working with and leading others- family dynamics, parenting, employement etc. I was drawn to reading this book because I full heartedly believe in the title. And just as he concludes, achieving a moral society is too complex to ever really happen with the knowledge we have as of now. I don't believe, as the author does, that we start moral and our situations promote us to be more self interested. I think even altruistic motives have an attribute of self interest involded- to some, feeling good is more of a reward then anything monetary and in the beginning that is enough for most of us until we learn of other more seemlingly rewarding rewards then feeling good. Therefore, for those that act altruistically, doing the right thing in the interest of others also serves their own interest of feeling good about themselves. Working with babies and toddlers for years, I see how they start by selfish desires for survival, to then becoming selfish for wants, to then learning how to manipulate people with compromise for selfish desires, all before they can form a full sentence. All of the major issues in the world will never ever be fully solved because we are all selfish... the question that is left then is how to motivate the majority to make their selfish decisions benefit the whole of the world, of which this book had some intriguing ideas.
July 23, 2016
A book that should be read by every economist, or really anyone interested in public policy.
October 10, 2020
An interesting book that uses a survey of numerous studies with game theory experiments to explore how incentives interact with people’s ethical motivations.
The main argument here is that it’s not necessarily wrong to use incentives that appeal to people’s self interest, but that relying _only_ on incentives (and not “ethical and other regarding motives”) is unlikely to achieve the desired results. I don’t know if this would really have shocked Hume, Bentham, Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill, but honestly it doesn’t seem that surprising to me. The most significant point is that incentives can “crowd out” ethical motives or social preferences. In other words, experiments show that for people who tend to be guided by ethics, providing incentives caused them to behave _less_ ethically than they would have without the incentives.
One minor point that nevertheless irritated me was the introduction of “Aristotle’s Legislator” (p. 12) without an explanation of the concept, and then continued references to it throughout the book. I guess the reader is expected to have read Politics and be familiar with the way Aristotle uses the term? Still seems reasonable to include a sentence or two here on this rhetorical figure.
Also, we are told that the experiments were carefully designed to be able to determine (to the best degree possible) what people’s underlying ethical motivations would have been in the absence of the incentives. But presumably not all people have the same level of ethical motivation. The question I found myself asking around the halfway point was: is there a proposal for a workable society where people with good motivations are free to demonstrate them without incentives, while those unlucky enough to be less ethically motivated are also able to be happy, successful participants who don’t harm themselves or others? It turns out that there is, and eventually Bowles gets there.
He starts by bringing to light a fascinating finding (although he warns us “Do not read too much into this”): the study of parking violations among international diplomats in New York City (p. 114) as a rough indication of whether members of more capitalist societies tend to behave more or less ethically than others.
This leads to an exploration of the mystery of why capitalist societies have not devolved into the self-interested dystopias envisioned by Marx (chapter V). The reason appears to be the other (non-market) aspects of liberal societies, including democracy, rule of law, social equality, and risk-reduction, which are compatible with, and interact positively with, the incentives inherent to capitalism.
Anyway, the real question is how to use this information to make the world a better place. Remove all incentives? What about when there are “natural” incentives to bad behavior, such as being unethical in politics? Wouldn’t it be best to introduce some “counter-incentives” to encourage good behavior? The author gives examples of cases in which incentives backfire, but of course it doesn’t follow that incentives should never be used. For example, incentives _not_ to do certain things, such as taxes on cigarettes or gasoline, still seem logical and reasonable, regardless of whether people feel any ethical reason to avoid using these things.
The bottom line is that ethical motivations also play a role, so the conclusion is that the most effective approach is “to encourage civil action by appealing to both material interests and moral sentiments, framed so that the two work synergistically rather than at cross purposes” (p. 220)
Bowles has made a valiant effort to write in an engaging way, and to some extent this is successful, but the nature of much of the content (summarizing fairly complex studies and analyzing their results using technical terminology from economics) makes it hard to avoid coming across a bit dry at times. There were also a couple of places where the explanation was just not clear enough for me to grasp - I’ll take partial blame for this as someone with limited knowledge of economics, but other laypeople can take that as a minor warning.
Overall, however, the book is informative and largely entertaining. I wavered between three and four stars, so I’m happy to round up if it helps give this book a wider audience.
The main argument here is that it’s not necessarily wrong to use incentives that appeal to people’s self interest, but that relying _only_ on incentives (and not “ethical and other regarding motives”) is unlikely to achieve the desired results. I don’t know if this would really have shocked Hume, Bentham, Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill, but honestly it doesn’t seem that surprising to me. The most significant point is that incentives can “crowd out” ethical motives or social preferences. In other words, experiments show that for people who tend to be guided by ethics, providing incentives caused them to behave _less_ ethically than they would have without the incentives.
One minor point that nevertheless irritated me was the introduction of “Aristotle’s Legislator” (p. 12) without an explanation of the concept, and then continued references to it throughout the book. I guess the reader is expected to have read Politics and be familiar with the way Aristotle uses the term? Still seems reasonable to include a sentence or two here on this rhetorical figure.
Also, we are told that the experiments were carefully designed to be able to determine (to the best degree possible) what people’s underlying ethical motivations would have been in the absence of the incentives. But presumably not all people have the same level of ethical motivation. The question I found myself asking around the halfway point was: is there a proposal for a workable society where people with good motivations are free to demonstrate them without incentives, while those unlucky enough to be less ethically motivated are also able to be happy, successful participants who don’t harm themselves or others? It turns out that there is, and eventually Bowles gets there.
He starts by bringing to light a fascinating finding (although he warns us “Do not read too much into this”): the study of parking violations among international diplomats in New York City (p. 114) as a rough indication of whether members of more capitalist societies tend to behave more or less ethically than others.
This leads to an exploration of the mystery of why capitalist societies have not devolved into the self-interested dystopias envisioned by Marx (chapter V). The reason appears to be the other (non-market) aspects of liberal societies, including democracy, rule of law, social equality, and risk-reduction, which are compatible with, and interact positively with, the incentives inherent to capitalism.
Anyway, the real question is how to use this information to make the world a better place. Remove all incentives? What about when there are “natural” incentives to bad behavior, such as being unethical in politics? Wouldn’t it be best to introduce some “counter-incentives” to encourage good behavior? The author gives examples of cases in which incentives backfire, but of course it doesn’t follow that incentives should never be used. For example, incentives _not_ to do certain things, such as taxes on cigarettes or gasoline, still seem logical and reasonable, regardless of whether people feel any ethical reason to avoid using these things.
The bottom line is that ethical motivations also play a role, so the conclusion is that the most effective approach is “to encourage civil action by appealing to both material interests and moral sentiments, framed so that the two work synergistically rather than at cross purposes” (p. 220)
Bowles has made a valiant effort to write in an engaging way, and to some extent this is successful, but the nature of much of the content (summarizing fairly complex studies and analyzing their results using technical terminology from economics) makes it hard to avoid coming across a bit dry at times. There were also a couple of places where the explanation was just not clear enough for me to grasp - I’ll take partial blame for this as someone with limited knowledge of economics, but other laypeople can take that as a minor warning.
Overall, however, the book is informative and largely entertaining. I wavered between three and four stars, so I’m happy to round up if it helps give this book a wider audience.
May 2, 2020
I picked up this book so I can understand better the impact of certain economic policies on citizens and if the responses of the citizens diminish the effects of these policies, especially so during the Covid-19 pandemic. Lets face it, with so much time stuck on our hands during the lockdown, we become expert critics when it comes to scrutinizing what the government has done to fight the pandemic and save the economy. With this book in hand, I expected to find out more.
The first chapter started out nice and engaging, we were thrown real-life examples of fines and their unexpected effect of people (Imposing fines on parents who were late in picking up their kid from the daycare led to an averse reaction of increased lateness).
And then we were introduced to the example of the firemen and their sick leave. And then it became very technical with graphs and diagrams drawn out and equations splayed over the pages. Needless to say the book lost 90% of my attention and each page was a torture to get through. About halfway through the book, I gave up :P
Judging by what I've read so far, I believe the entire book is about how the behavior of homo economicus is actually in reality, not what it was in theory (duh). We learnt that the homo economicus are motivated by other factors (ethics, morals, social impacts, etc) other than just simply maximising their own benefit.
"Ethical and other-regarding motives have always been essential to a well-governed society. This is why policy makers should be concerned about the response of the people."- One takeaway I got from this book.
Another takeaway is that I should probably steer 10 million miles clear of technical books such as these.
The first chapter started out nice and engaging, we were thrown real-life examples of fines and their unexpected effect of people (Imposing fines on parents who were late in picking up their kid from the daycare led to an averse reaction of increased lateness).
And then we were introduced to the example of the firemen and their sick leave. And then it became very technical with graphs and diagrams drawn out and equations splayed over the pages. Needless to say the book lost 90% of my attention and each page was a torture to get through. About halfway through the book, I gave up :P
Judging by what I've read so far, I believe the entire book is about how the behavior of homo economicus is actually in reality, not what it was in theory (duh). We learnt that the homo economicus are motivated by other factors (ethics, morals, social impacts, etc) other than just simply maximising their own benefit.
"Ethical and other-regarding motives have always been essential to a well-governed society. This is why policy makers should be concerned about the response of the people."- One takeaway I got from this book.
Another takeaway is that I should probably steer 10 million miles clear of technical books such as these.
March 18, 2022
It is very painful for me to read this book. The author introduces the novel concept that the social preferences could sometimes, in certain special circumstances, crowd in or otherwise crowd out the incentives provided by the goverments, and vice versa.
At cross purposes with the idea concerning the social and behavioral economics on the part of us, Samuel Bowels illustrates the reason that a good mechanism is not composed of various independent parts by citing the fact that a small tax as a penalty on the lateness of parents picking up their children in day care centers had caused even an increase in the frequency of their unpunctuality. A trivial fine did not induce the moral sentiments of these parents, but caused their misunderstanding of the function of the fine. To redress the situation, the legislator should use suitable moral messages to complement the extrinsic material incentives.
The book is hard to read for most people without economics background; the author is not a good storyteller. This makes the book very tedious and difficult to understand.
At cross purposes with the idea concerning the social and behavioral economics on the part of us, Samuel Bowels illustrates the reason that a good mechanism is not composed of various independent parts by citing the fact that a small tax as a penalty on the lateness of parents picking up their children in day care centers had caused even an increase in the frequency of their unpunctuality. A trivial fine did not induce the moral sentiments of these parents, but caused their misunderstanding of the function of the fine. To redress the situation, the legislator should use suitable moral messages to complement the extrinsic material incentives.
The book is hard to read for most people without economics background; the author is not a good storyteller. This makes the book very tedious and difficult to understand.
April 27, 2019
The moral economy is an interesting read. It should be read by everyone interested in behavioral economics. The book directly addresses how one can get to a socially desirable society by exploiting the social preferences of an individual and discusses the role of incentives. Bowles discusses the role of incentives and their effect on social preferences by giving examples from a lot of experiments from all over the world. The book provides policy guidelines to the legislature to steer society to a desirable direction. This book is very close in spirit to the book ‘Nudge’, in a sense that both of these books are trying to appeal to human behavior for policy making but Samuel's book is different in a way that it directly talks about preferences and how the preferences are endogenized by the environment of the person and most importantly how the incentives can backfire by changing the preferences. It's a great read. I highly recommend it!
November 28, 2023
The core of the book is that pure self-interest should not, and, in fact, cannot sustain a prosperous society. Bowles marshals much evidence from psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics to make his case.
Sometimes, we are told, adding monetary inducements to certain interactions undermines existing pro-social norms. The same could be true for certain forms of compulsion. On the other hand, moral urges and social norms can sustain market interactions and enhance wealth. Governments and communities can potentially leverage the morality of the population to achieve economic goals. Markets can even facilitate trust and the development of norms.
Given the wide range of social settings and complex causal relationships of the mechanisms Bowles describes, this relatively short book leaves one with much to consider about the way we are governed, and the relationships between society, laws, and markets.
Sometimes, we are told, adding monetary inducements to certain interactions undermines existing pro-social norms. The same could be true for certain forms of compulsion. On the other hand, moral urges and social norms can sustain market interactions and enhance wealth. Governments and communities can potentially leverage the morality of the population to achieve economic goals. Markets can even facilitate trust and the development of norms.
Given the wide range of social settings and complex causal relationships of the mechanisms Bowles describes, this relatively short book leaves one with much to consider about the way we are governed, and the relationships between society, laws, and markets.
November 8, 2018
Rewards and punishments might not work as the applicants wish. In this book the author use the before and after effect on certain real cases to compare the human behaviors difference.
1. Kindergarten belated to pick-up parents to apply the fine cause more parents to be late.
2. Citizens in Switzerland become more unwilling to construct polluted but good for local economics factory after they were offered the compensation.
....
本书从经济学的角度出发，提出了一个石破天惊的反常识观点——不恰当的激励手段不仅不会促进效率的提升，而且会造成出乎意料甚至事与愿违的结果。既然“无情”的生存竞争必然导致生命个体的“自利”特征，又如何能产生约束个体自利诉求，甚至牺牲自身利益而考虑其他个体利益的行为？
什么样的激励手段是不恰当的？为什么不恰当的激励手段会导致事与愿违的结果？
小到个人（如父母、老师）和企业、大到一个国家，采取什么样的激励措施才能有效地理解对方的需求，从而达到自己的想要的结果？
本书举出了数十个洞察人心的经济学实验，揭示了不为人知的人性真相。
同时，鲍尔斯教授也评析了诸多经济学、哲学史上的大儒如休谟、曼德维尔、马基雅维利等的观点，还引述了大量的经济学、哲学、心理学经典著作，不仅分析了如上问题的缘由，还给出了解决问题的恰当方法。
人性本善，合理的手段能使人性的光辉更加闪耀。
1. Kindergarten belated to pick-up parents to apply the fine cause more parents to be late.
2. Citizens in Switzerland become more unwilling to construct polluted but good for local economics factory after they were offered the compensation.
....
本书从经济学的角度出发，提出了一个石破天惊的反常识观点——不恰当的激励手段不仅不会促进效率的提升，而且会造成出乎意料甚至事与愿违的结果。既然“无情”的生存竞争必然导致生命个体的“自利”特征，又如何能产生约束个体自利诉求，甚至牺牲自身利益而考虑其他个体利益的行为？
什么样的激励手段是不恰当的？为什么不恰当的激励手段会导致事与愿违的结果？
小到个人（如父母、老师）和企业、大到一个国家，采取什么样的激励措施才能有效地理解对方的需求，从而达到自己的想要的结果？
本书举出了数十个洞察人心的经济学实验，揭示了不为人知的人性真相。
同时，鲍尔斯教授也评析了诸多经济学、哲学史上的大儒如休谟、曼德维尔、马基雅维利等的观点，还引述了大量的经济学、哲学、心理学经典著作，不仅分析了如上问题的缘由，还给出了解决问题的恰当方法。
人性本善，合理的手段能使人性的光辉更加闪耀。
September 6, 2019
As I have practically no background in economics, this was a hard read for me. The author seemingly intends this for a general audience, but he assumes a lot of knowledge about economists, living and dead, and game theory. His point, however, that devising policies on the basis of considering that people are only motivated by self-interest, mainly money—which has held sway in particular in the Chicago school of economics—is certainly well-taken. For me he is at his best when giving specific examples and not presenting graphs of the outcomes of game theory, although I was pleasantly surprised at the breadth of the societies which participated in the games. In the end, however, he challenges what has been the prevailing economic theory without giving much guidance to his hypothetical "Legislator" tasked with setting policies.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2025
Bowles shows among other things that liberal societies exhibit more pro-social personal tendencies (like valuing fairness) not because markets are central to them but because they foster widespread trust in institutions rather than persons. He shows that there can be a virtuous circle of pro-social preferences leading to more trust (and less complete contracts) and in turn more pro-social preferences. More generally he shows that pro-social preferences are not simply substitutes for material incentives but can be crowded in or out. The implications for the question whether markets play too big or small a role in society aren't obvious to me. Ideally we would foster institutions that convey moral messages and build the trust that functional markets depend on.
April 10, 2021
Economists think about the world in terms of incentive structures. Our field of "mechanism design" focuses on designing incentive structures to get people to behave in certain ways in order to achieve certain outcomes. But lots of research shows that sometimes incentives are ineffective, and sometimes they backfire altogether. Sam Bowles makes sense of a large body of seemingly contradictory results, and posits a theory about when and under what circumstances incentives will be effective at shaping the behavior of "knaves" to the common good. Good incentives are not enough to make people good. Excellent.
July 10, 2018
While dense and a little too technical to be a great teacher, this book offers concrete and detailed reports on the benefits and cons of relying on the market economy. I walked away thinking about society in a way that isn't merely controlled through economics but also by messaging. How do we transform and turn our society into a flourishing one? And how do we keep its populations moral in the face of an ever-increasing focus on finance?
This book isn't for everyone but for people into ethics and economics, this is a worthwhile read to get the brain going.
This book isn't for everyone but for people into ethics and economics, this is a worthwhile read to get the brain going.
June 4, 2019
Excellent book. Must read for economists, policy makers, and researchers aiming for an evidence based policies. Clear arguments on why you should not dismiss social preferences when you design policies and incentives. Written by an economist, using a language of economists and based on well documented results from experiments. It is hard to deny the conclusions of the book that call for a policies taking into account social preferences (moral aspects) of human behavior and interactions.
January 13, 2023
Довольно интересная книга о том, что экономические стимулы могут вытеснять естественную кооперацию людей в сообществах, в частности, приведены результаты экспериментов, относящихся к поведенческой экономике. Изыскания автора начинают вызывать сомнения, когда он пытается доказать, что либеральный капитализм воспитывает людей, более склонных к сотрудничеству друг с другом, но в целом - отличная научная работа, о результатах которой имеет смысл дискутировать.
April 30, 2018
This was quite a taxing book to read, because it plays with economics principles and goes back and forth on how effective incentives are in promoting good behaviour amongst citizens. The underlying premise is that while incentives may motivate performance or particular behaviours, they undermine the underlying motivation.
February 21, 2021
I found this book very difficult to read because it is primarily an academic work. I understand the larger premise and it definitely is an interesting idea with tons of credible evidence, but the technical nature makes it quite difficult to read and requires a lot of patience to get through.
Want to read
January 7, 2024Given to me by my brother so I can't say that I got this for Xmas but I guess it counts.
Another one I will take forever to read...
Another one I will take forever to read...
May 19, 2024
I found the language and explanations a bit difficult. Felt like I could have read Thinking Fast and Slow and gained the same and more insight. Fine book though
August 1, 2017
The main thesis of the book is that incentives can alter social norms and preferences and thus reduce (or in some cases increase) the effect of the incentive on behavior. Bowles presents convincing experimental evidence for this effect but his book does not answer why incentives sometimes crowd-out social norms and strengthen them in other cases.
July 5, 2016
An informative read that shows the limits and adverse effects of assuming the existence of economic man (Homo Economicus). As Bowles shows through a wealth of case studies, when incentive structures assume that people are purely self-interested, they will "crowd out" ethical and other-regarding motivations, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The case studies are often quite interesting, but can feel rather repetitive or overly long at times as Bowles gets bogged down in the details.
Read
November 18, 2016330 B7873 2016
January 26, 2017
Interesting read with many great insights into human behavior—althoigh repetitive at times. Calls for a complementary book on how politics crowds out/in civic virtue.
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