A01=Samuel Bowles
Author_Samuel Bowles
behavior experiments
business practices
case studies
Category=KCA
Category=QDTQ
Category=QDTS
citizens
civic motives
economic man
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
ethics
fines and rewards
generosity
government
historical study
human nature
humanity
incentives
legislation
materialism
modern philosophy
monetary rewards
money
moral philosophy
moral society
morality
morality and ethics
philosophical
political philosophy
public good
self interest
sentimentality
social norms
thought provoking
workforce
Product details
- ISBN 9780300230512
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 130 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 24 Oct 2017
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Samuel Bowles directs the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute and is the author of Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution; A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution (with Herbert Gintis);andThe New Economics of Inequality and Redistribution.
