The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life (38 page)
Read The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life Online
Authors: Uri Gneezy,John List
18
. The solicitors all signed consent forms agreeing to allow this evaluation. The interested reader should see the excellent work of Jeff E. Biddle & Daniel S. Hamermesh, 1998. “Beauty, Productivity and Discrimination: Lawyers’ Looks and Lucre,” NBER Working Paper 5636 in the area of measuring the value of physical attractiveness.
19
. See Craig E. Landry, Andreas Lange, John A. List, Michael K. Price, and Nicholas G. Rupp, “Is a Donor in Hand Better Than Two in the Bush? Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment,”
American Economic Review
100 (2010): 958–983.
20
.
The Daily Show with John Stewart
, February 16, 2011,
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-february-16–2011/you-re-welcome—-balancing-the-budget
.
21
. Much of this is taken directly from Andreas Lange, John A. List, and Michael K. Price, “A Fundraising Mechanism Inspired by Historical Tontines: Theory and Experimental Evidence,”
Journal of Public Economics
91 (June 2007): 1750–1782.
22
. See David Leonhardt, “What Makes People Give?”
New York Times Magazine
, March 9, 2008.
Chapter 10: What Can Cleft Palates and Opt-Out Boxes Teach Us About People’s Reasons for Giving to Charity?
1
. See “Pinki Sonkar: From School Outcast to an Oscar-Winning Film,”
People Magazine
, February 23, 2009,
http://www.peoplestylewatch.com/people/stylewatch/redcarpet/2009/article/0,,20249180_20260685,00.html?xid=rss-fullcontent
. By the way, Smile Train commissioned the film, and it was the biggest, most effective ad campaign the charity ever ran!
2
. There is by now a fair amount of evidence in the literature supporting this viewpoint, including some of our own. See John A. List and Michael K. Price, “The Role of Social Connections in Charitable Fundraising: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment,”
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
69, no. 2 (2009): 160–169.
3
. See Amee Kamdar, Steven D. Levitt, John A. List, Brian Mullaney, and Chad Syverson, “Once and Done: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Increase Charitable Contributions,” NBER working paper to be published in 2013.
4
. The interested reader should see the psychology and economics literatures, which are full of models and experiments showing that people tend to be nice to those who are nice to them. See, for example: Akerlof, George. 1982. “Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange.” Q.J.E. 97 (November): 543–69; Rabin, Matthew. 1993. “Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics”;
A.E.R
. 83 (December): 1281–1302; Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter. 2000. “Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity.”
J. Econ. Perspectives
14 (Summer): 159–81; Dufwenberg, Martin, and Georg Kirchsteiger. 2004. “A Theory of Sequential Reciprocity.”
Games and Econ. Behavior
47 (May): 269–98; Charness, Gary. 2004. “Attribution and Reciprocity in an Experimental Labor Market.” Manuscript, Univ. California, Santa Barbara; Sobel, Joel. 2005. “Social Preferences and Reciprocity.” Manuscript, Univ. California, San Diego; Falk, Armin. 2007. “Charitable Giving as a Gift Exchange: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” IZA Working Paper no. 1148, Inst. Study Labor, Bonn.
5
. Belinda Luscombe, “Using Business Savvy to Help Good Causes,”
Time Magazine
, March 17, 2011.
6
. The charitable-giving deduction is a hotly debated policy. Many in the industry say that getting rid of the tax deduction would ravage the nonprofit sector. This argument is a matter of ongoing research and the jury is still out. But the real impact hinges on determining exactly why people give.
Chapter 11: Why Is Today’s Business Manager an Endangered Species?
1
. “Netfilx Introduces New Plans and Announces Price Changes,” Netflix US & Canada Blog, Tuesday, July 12, 2011,
http://blog.netflix.com/2011/07/netflix-introduces-new-plans-and.html?commentPage=25
.
2
. “Netflix Apology,”
Saturday Night Live
video,
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/netflix-apology/1359563/
.
3
. Stephen F. Jencks, Mark V. Williams, and Eric A. Coleman, “Rehospitalizations Among Patients in the Medicare Fee-for-Service Program,”
New England Journal of Medicine
360 (2009): 1418–1428.
4
. In the following, we describe our experience in the winery with more details: “Intuition Can’t Beat Experimentation,” Rady School of Management, UC San Diego,
http://rady.ucsd.edu/mba/student/clubs/rbj/rady-business-journal/2011/intuition/
(last accessed April 29, 2013). For a description of the experiment, see Ayelet Gneezy and Uri Gneezy, “Pricing Experimentation in Firms: Testing the Price Equal Quality Heuristics,” Rady School of Management, UC San Diego,
http://econ.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/11975/Gneezy_CESS.pdf
.
5
. Ayelet Gneezy, Uri Gneezy, Leif D. Nelson, and Amber Brown, “Shared Social Responsibility: A Field Experiment in Pay-What-You-Want Pricing and Charitable Giving,”
Science
329 (2010): 325–327.
6
. Uri Gneezy and Pedro Rey-Biel, “On the Relative Efficiency of Performance Pay and Social Incentives,” Barcelona Graduate School of Economics working paper no. 585, October 2011.
7
. Tanjim Hossain and John A. List, “The Behavioralist Visits the Factory: Increasing Productivity Using Simple Framing Manipulations,”
Management Science
58 (2012): 2151–2167.
Epilogue
1
. This passage comes from Steven D. Levitt and John A. List, “What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
21, no. 2 (2007): 153–174. For an early paper by a pioneer in the field of experimental economics, see Vernon L. Smith, “Microeconomic Systems as an Experimental Science,”
American Economic Review
72, no. 5 (1982): 923–955.
2
. For obvious reasons, we encourage you not to deceive your clients. In this case, don’t advertise a matching grant if it doesn’t exist.
Accelerated Reader,
84
Adaptation,
30–31
Affirmative Action,
139–141
African Americans
discrimination against,
115–116
,
121–123
discrimination against gay couples and,
134–135
risk for teen gun violence and,
155
,
156
Age
discrimination based on,
120–123
education interventions and student,
89–90
Air France,
130
Albert, Derrion,
146
,
147
,
151
,
153
All in the Family
(television program),
12
Altgeld Gardens housing project (Chicago),
145
Altruism, charitable giving and,
14
,
15
,
172
,
184
American Cancer Society,
191
Amnesty International,
209
Animus-based discrimination,
113–116
attribution theory and,
138–139
combined with economic discrimination,
124–127
distinguishing from economic discrimination,
120–127
,
132–138
public policy and,
139–141
Apartheid,
111
Apple,
217
Applicant screening, discrimination and,
10–11
Aristotle,
68
Attribution theory, discrimination and,
138–139
Auto dealerships.
See
Car sales/dealerships
Becker, Jessie,
215
Becker, Louis,
111–112
Behavior
designing incentives to change,
28–31
lower price and changes in,
168–169
social norms and changes in,
167–169
Behavioral economics consortium,
223–224
Behavioral issues, risk for gun violence and,
155
Behavioral manipulations,
106
Behavioral pricing approach,
227–230
Big data
concerns about,
8–9
economic discrimination and,
118–119
,
143–144
Blockbuster,
214
Bloomberg, Michael,
184
Bloom Trail High School (Chicago Heights, Illinois),
72
,
89
Bok, Derek,
200
Bonus incentives,
236
Brooks, David,
8
Brown, Amber,
227
Brown v. Board of Education
,
66
Buffett, Warren,
193
Burd, Steven,
28
Burn Rescue,
208
Business innovation/experimentation,
212–239
barriers to experimentation in business,
237–238
direct mail surveys,
230–233
field experiments,
5
,
217–233
,
234–236
,
237–239
framing as business tool,
233–236
at Humana,
222–225
at Intuit,
218–221
at Netflix,
213–217
pricing and,
225–230
California, Proposition
209
,
140
Campbell Soup Company,
60
Car insurance, discrimination based on gender and,
116–117
Carle, Eric,
94
Carlyle, Thomas,
17
Car sales/dealerships
distinguishing economic from animus-based discrimination and,
132–138
gender and price negotiation and,
60
Causality, correlation
vs
.,
6–12
Center for Environmental Policy Analysis (CEPA),
174
,
177–178
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
158
CEO positions, women in,
35
CEPA.
See
Center for Environmental Policy Analysis (CEPA)
Charitable giving
incentives to increase,
13–15
,
209–211
motivation for,
171–173
,
192–193
,
195
pay-what-you-want pricing combined with,
228–230
self-interest and,
184
,
185
,
192–193
,
210
using field experiments to find ways to encourage,
5
“warm glow” theory of,
184
,
185
,
192–193
See also
Fundraising
Chertoff, Michael,
151
Chicago
reduction of gun violence in,
150
Chicago Food Depository,
161
Chicago Heights (Illinois),
15
,
68–70
education reform attempts in,
72–90
