ATTENTION METRO STUDENTS:
YOU MUST SUBMIT YOUR RESPONSES TO THE CHAPTER 1 QUESTIONS by Sunday 2/19 then you must give thoughtful responses to 2 other students by Wednesday 2/22.
Reminder both the answers to the questions and your comments to other students must be thoughtful and demonstrate knowledge of the economic concepts discussed in the chapter.
http://www.picsearch.com/pictures/books%20and%20comics/books/freakonomics.html
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ReplyDelete1. The parents probably thought it was unfair to be fined because things like traffic, working late, or something important kept them from picking their child at the usual time. So with that, they may have just kept on showing up late because the people who fined them never thought that maybe something came up and they HAD to show up late, or there was a delay that could be overlooked that kept them from showing up on time. Thus backfiring the incentive of paying extra because he or she showed up late.
ReplyDelete2. An incentive is a reward of some sort that drives you to do something. Economics is the study of incentives.
3. Buying a box of shoes with a charity tie-in. Moral incentive: children in other countries get shoes. Economic incentive: you get a cool pair of shoes for a decent amount of money. These incentives are complementary because they are mutualistic. And obviously, the stronger incentive is getting a cool pair of shoes for a decent amount of money.
4. The teacher could probably give simpler classes have shorter tests with simple questions, easy homework assignments and projects, and decent lessons.
5. In the chapter, such regulations caused a teacher in Oakland, California to cheat by writing the exam answers on the board. So one example is teachers cheating.
6. Compose an algorithm with a, b, c, or d as right answers, 1, 2, 3, or 4 as wrong answers, and 0 as answers left blank. His analysis showed evidence of cheating because it showed very weird answering patterns in the strings of answers.
7. Any incentive might be a contract with the NBA or the NFL. Or maybe a chance to participate in the Olympics. Probably something sports related would persuade a university to that.
8. The tournament has 15 matches, 1 a day over 16 days. If a wrestler wins 8 matches in a row, he ranks up. If he has a losing record, he falls.
9. To be on the bubble, you have 7 wins and 7 losses. A quid pro quo agreement would convince a wrestler to throw a match
10. If sumo wrestlers rig matches, the media hunts them down. Evidence of that is that sumo wrestlers in the bubble win 50% percent of their final day matches against sumo wrestlers with 8 wins and 6 losses.
11. He delivered bagels in the morning and collected cash in a basket. It was different because he wasn’t there to see if his customers actually paid and not steal his money. Hence him being a victim of theft.
12. The data concludes that personal mood effects honesty, small offices are more honest than big ones, etc. It does match because economists would think that because the people would have some incentive when they buy things.
13. It opens a window of study for honesty. It’s a hard study because any type of weather can only be predicted, so people could cheat or pay higher rate at any time. They could have any type of incentive based on weather or mood.
14. The size of the office, whether the employees like the boss or not, and if the employees like working there or not.
What examples can you think of where moral or social incentives and economic incentives are both
ReplyDeletepresent? Are the different incentives complementary or competing? For each of the cases you cite,
which do you think is the stronger incentive?
A common incentive is marriage.
Morally, religion and love come into play. People want to amplify their sense of trust for that person. So they take a vow of marriage. Religion is usually another factor, offering further incentives into the level of love the relationship can reach.
Economically, marriage offers certain tax offerings, as well as a stronger base for raising children. Two incomes, with fewer taxes, is a strong economic incentive.
Socially, marriage makes a couple seem attractive to other families, and also less… slanderous than just a girlfriend and boyfriend scenario.
Another common incentive is divorce.
Morally, this one is a little tricky to look at. As most people would morally be against divorce, but morals are socially exclusive. Morally, one has to take care of themselves, and their pleasures. In other words, it’s moral to be selfish. So, if you are unhappy in a marriage, divorce has a strong moral incentive.
Economically, one might desire to push their income up, and not deal with expenses of their partner. They might want more freedom to pursue their passions.
Socially, one might have pressure from friends and family that their relationship needs to end. And a social incentive is also to make new friends, and perhaps anger friends they wish to lose.
For both marriage and divorce, each incentive is complimentary, but can be competing. Moral incentives are the strongest for both, however.