《Freakonomics(魔鬼经济学）》章节试读

《Freakonomics(魔鬼经济学）》的笔记-第1页 - Chapter 1. School teachers and Sumo wrestlers

Economics is, at root, the study of incentives.
An incentive is a bluet, a lever, key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation.
Three basic flavors of incentive: economic, social and moral. Very often a singe incentive scheme will include all three varieties.
Note (original): An economist should be sensitive to his surroundings, gets detective eyes to daily life, critical mind to everyday events
Individuals’ response to different incentives
- Daycare Center
Previously, when parents came late, teachers would accompany students to wait for free. Then, they began to charge extra fee for waiting. But due to the fee is too cheap, and parents then got over their sense of guilty, the amount of parents who came late raised. And when they stopping charging, the amount didn’t went down then.
- Blood donation
When people are given a small stipend for donating blood rather than simply being priced for their altruism, they tend to donate less blood. The stipend turned a noble act of charity into a painful way to make a few dollars, and it was’t worth it.
- teacher’s cheatingHigh-stake testing
- Cultural difference
US: teaching to the test (teaching students exam techniques, doing former questions) - break the spirit of testing
Chicago Public School: schools with better performance get more fundings and benefits; instead, poor schools might even be closed. Therefore, teachers got their incentive to cheat. It turns out to be bad teachers are more likely to cheat.
- Sumo wrestlers
Situation: annual elite tournament to decide wrestlers’ ranking. If a wrestler finishes the tournament with a winning record (eight victories or better), his ranking will rise.
Cheating: in the final day of a tournament, the players with 7-7 record always win the opponents with 8-6 record, while the statistical data indicates the 7-7 players are more likely to lose.
- Is mankind innately and universally corrupt?
- Counter example: Bagel (an honesty business mode)
a study of white-collar crime, as it is not likely to caught like street crime.
people’s different attitudes towards the same goods offered by different seller (a resort hotel or a grocery)
large community (city) with tigers crime rate
personal mode sometimes also affects individuals’ honesty
- classical example: The Ring of Gyges
Plato’s Republic. Storyteller: Glaucon, in response (disagree) to a lesson by Socrates.
Argument: people are generally good even without enforcement. (Socrates)
The Ring of Gyges, Gyges, a shepherd, got a magic ring to be invisible, with no one able to monitor his behavior and he began to do bad things. But from the Bagel’s selling statistics, at least 87% of the time, people are honest.