Jason Murphy Incentivology

Annotation

Rewards. Punishments. Prices. The Nobel Prize. Candy Crush. Incentives take more forms than you might expect and they can be hard to spot, but theyshapeour lives inways that werarely examine. Some incentives are obvious, like for example, publicly committing to doing something you dislike in order to motivate you to do something difficult, like lose weight. But, many of the most powerful incentives are accidental,and invisible even to those who designed them.Some are tame and some are most definitely not. Whetherit'sbounties for criminals or Instagrammable meals,training your dog or saving the planet,incentivesregularlybackfire, go missing, mutate and evolve.Without oversight,theirunintended consequences can have very global effects.InIncentivology,economistJason Murphyuncovers the hugeincentivesystems we takefor granted and turns theminside out. In lively, entertaining prose he explores the mechanisms behind manyspectacular failures and successes in our history, culture and everyday lives, and shows us how to use (or lose) incentives in our world at large.