Quotes & Sayings About Incentives

Pay-for-procedure or fee-for-service reimbursement rewards doctors and hospitals for volume - not keeping patients healthy or being efficiency. Pay-for-Performance is clearly one tool that can change the incentives to reward quality. — Ron Wyden

According to a recent report drafted by thirty-nine physicians from the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and endorsed by some 2,500 medical doctors, a movement to "a single payer system would trim administration, reduce incentives to over-treat, lower drug prices, minimize wasteful investments in redundant facilities, and eliminate almost all marketing and investor profits. These measures would yield the substantial savings needed to fund universal care and new investments in currently under-funded services and public health activities - without any net increase in national health spending." In — Bernie Sanders

I would not be opposed to devising a new system of pensions, in which one part was based on collective provision, but which also gave incentives for people to take out an additional, personal plan. — Jacques Delors

I love when problems have simple solutions. Cold medicine. Umbrellas. Condoms. Tax incentives & subsidies attracting favored industries. — Greg Fitzsimmons

It's for management to enthuse & motivate employees towards excellence in service; the profit incentive doesn't last — Phil Harding

The Chinese Communist Party has seen fit to protect most property rights because it recognizes that it has a self-interest in doing so. But the party faces no legal constraints other than its own internal political controls if it decides to violate property rights. Many peasants find their land coveted by municipal authorities and developers who want to turn it into commercial real estate, high-density housing, shopping centers, and the like, or else into public infrastructure like roads, dams, or government offices. There are large incentives for developers to work together with corrupt local officials to illegally take land away from peasants or urban homeowners, and such takings have been perhaps the largest single source of social discontent in contemporary China.33 — Francis Fukuyama

Too little attention is paid to the dark side of incentives. They are anything but a magic bullet. Psychologists have known this for years, but it seems largely hidden from the world of commerce. — Barry Schwartz

I think things that contribute to the destruction of our free-incentive system are wrong. A trend against that free-incentive system is wrong, and should only be temporarily engaged in, in the event that war or something of that kind requires it. Otherwise, it should be reduced. — George M. Humphrey

Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder. — Nikita Khrushchev

We need to create incentives for our ranchers and farmers to manage their lands to maximize carbon sequestration. — Michael Pollan

The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives. — Arthur C. Brooks

Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. And understanding them - or, often, deciphering them - is the key to understanding a problem, and how it might be solved. — Steven D. Levitt

The solution to our problems is not more paternalism, laws, decrees, and controls, but the restoration of liberty and free enterprise, the restoration of incentives, to let loose the tremendous constructive energies of 300 million Americans. — Henry Hazlitt

An across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes ... to expand the incentives and opportunities of private expenditures. — John F. Kennedy

Somehow no really terrible Western ideas like, say, witch-burning or communism ever get mentioned, though they seem just as plausibly the products of Judaeo-Christian culture as the spirit of capitalism. In any case, while culture may instil norms, institutions create incentives. Britons versed in much the same culture behaved very differently depending on whether they emigrated to New England or worked for the East India Company in Bengal. In the former case we find inclusive institutions, in the latter extractive ones. — Niall Ferguson

Most of economics can be summarized in four words: 'People respond to incentives.' The rest is commentary. — Steven Landsburg

Those who profess the faith of Life regard the ideals of mankind as an expression of man's higher needs. Ideals which were once incentives to development thus become a drag upon it whenever life's needs demand new forms that are not recognised by the prevailing idealism. — Ellen Key

Conflicting legislation and regulations, overlapping mandates, unwillingness to enforce land use, elite capture, entrenched attitudes, and lack of incentives to influence behavior are rife in many resource-rich countries. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Motivating people is more than having the right incentives, the right programs and the right benefit packages. It's about tapping into the unique passions, personalities and strengths of those entrusted to our care. — Steve Knox

Economic growth springs not chiefly from incentives - carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments for workers and entrepreneurs. The incentive theory of capitalism allows its critics to depict it as an inhumane scheme of clever manipulation of human needs and hungers scarcely superior to the more benign forms of slavery. Wealth actually springs from the expansion of information and learning, profits and creativity that enhance the human qualities of its beneficiaries as it enriches them. Workers' learning increasingly compensates for their labor, which imparts knowledge as it extracts work. Joining knowledge and power, capitalism focuses on the entropy of human minds and the benefits of freedom. Thus it is the most humane of all economic systems. — George Gilder

To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of scores of colored youth. — Mary Church Terrell

It is a libel to suggest that children need rewards for attending to tasks, apart from intrinsic interest and satisfaction. Children work very hard in their purposeful endeavors in the world, when they have ends they want to accomplish themselves. It is meaningless teaching, not learning, that demands irrelevant incentives. — Frank Smith

I think we also have learned the lesson that we have to have better incentive structures. — Richard Thaler

I never know the endings when I write. It's a turnoff when you know the ending. You lose much of your incentive to write when you already know. It's like seeing a movie a second time. — Etgar Keret

That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword - the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men - stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by the spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honour not less punctilious than that of old Spain is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica. — Winston S. Churchill

Over a period of time, they [undocumented workers] can have a legalized status that allows them to live a life of dignity but not necessarily a path to citizenship, so as to not create incentives for future people that aspire to come to our country to do so illegally when they could come legally. — Jeb Bush

Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. — Henry Hazlitt

Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them. — Thomas Sowell

We need to find a way to safeguard humanity whilst still offering short-term financial incentives. For sure, we need innovators in finance more than we need innovation in technology. — David W. Wood

I believe in market economics. But to paraphrase Churchill - who said this about democracy and political regimes - a market economy might be the worst economic regime available, apart from the alternatives. I believe that people react to incentives, that incentives matter, and that prices reflect the way things should be allocated. But I also believe that market economies sometimes have market failures, and when these occur, there's a role for prudential - not excessive - regulation of the financial system. — Nouriel Roubini

The challenge for the principal, then, is to devise incentives to ensure that she (the agent) will act in the best interest of her principal. This — Janine Wedel

There are many reasons for increased spending on health care, including an aging population, technological change, perverse incentives, supply-induced demand, and fear of malpractice litigation. The broader point is that the basic underlying problem does not entail misbehavior or incompetence but rather stems from the nature of the provision of labor-intensive services. — William J. Baumol

Yet while it may be true that religious zeal can inspire armies better than most secular incentives, there was another great awakening that occurred before and during the Revolutionary era that also played a role. The other great awakening was a reevaluation of the merits of doubt. Often unspoken, religious skepticism in the colonial era was taboo even among professed radicals. Yet the spiritual awakenings of the middle of the eighteenth century signaled a transformation of "unbelief" from presumed moral failing to a reasonable theological and political position. — Peter Manseau

Technology isn't simply addictive - it's addictive because it's a servant to business incentives. There are huge departments in these companies that are devoted to this and staffed by incredibly talented people who have skills that could be put to socially beneficial projects but who are now trying to find out how to make you click and how to maximize your time on a certain site, or encourage teenagers to "friend" more products and constantly engage with them. — Astra Taylor

Tax rates aren't everything with regard to incentives to work. I would probably work at a 100% tax rate next to a nude modeling studio. I'm joking, but you know what I'm saying. There's a lot more to it than just tax rates. It's economics that I do; I don't do nude modeling studio economics. People do respond to taxes. — Arthur Laffer

I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

When I was a child and teenager I read whenever I had the opportunity, but since then I've found it hard to read as much as I'd like, children, work, and pets all providing powerful incentives to escape into a book and a practical reason why I rarely do so. — Louise Brown

Increased government spending can provide a temporary stimulus to demand and output but in the longer run higher levels of government spending crowd out private investment or require higher taxes that weaken growth by reducing incentives to save, invest, innovate, and work. — Martin Feldstein

People might not change but their incentives could. — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Gun control does not decrease gun ownership by criminals but instead reduces their incentives to refrain from violence because it decreases the supply of armed law-abiding citizens who might resist them. — John McGinnis

There is an increasing gap between academic research and business application. Sometimes the incentives for success in the academic world are not consistent with what it takes to run a company. — Dave Ulrich

When incentive to acquire and obtain property is gone, people no longer make efforts to acquire any ... Those who infringe upon property rights commit an injustice ... If this occurs repeatedly, all incentives to cultural enterprise are destroyed and they cease utterly to make an effort. This leads to destruction and ruin of civilization. — Ibn Khaldun

I do my housework in the nude. It gives me an incentive to clean the mirrors as quickly as possible. — Maxine

Forces of Destruction: grades in school, merit system, incentive pay, business plans, quotas. — W. Edwards Deming

Capitalism has given people both the liberty and the incentive to create, produce, and trade, thereby generating prosperity. — Johan Norberg

If you wanted to predict how people would behave, Munger said, you only had to look at their incentives. — Michael Lewis

Explanations involving conspiracy, greed, and even stupidity are easier to generate and accept than more complex explanations that may be closer to the truth.

A bit of wisdom called Hanlon's Razor advises us 'Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.' I would add a clumsier but more accurate corollary to this: 'Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system of interactions.' People behaving with no central coordination and acting in their own best interest can still create results that appear to some to be clear proof of conspiracy or a plague of ignorance. — Douglas W. Hubbard

We must start now to provide additional stimulus to the modernization of American industrial plants I shall propose to the Congress a new tax incentive for businesses to expand their normal investment in plant and equipment. — John F. Kennedy

We have yet to discover the true incentive, the inner Will which will have an over-mastering effect upon our lives, and yet be present in every circumstance and incident. — Nilakanta Sri Ram

Under a socialist mode of production all personal incentives which selfishness provides under capitalism are removed, and a premium is put upon laziness and negligence. Whereas in a capitalist society selfishness incites everyone to the utmost diligence, in a socialist society it makes for inertia and laxity. — Ludwig Von Mises

Men of dissolute lives have little incentive to look forward to the hopes and glories of immortality. A due conception of these would be incompatible with such a life. — Henry Ward Beecher

Supply-side economists argue that because lower tax rates allow everyone in the private sector to keep more of what they earn, tax relief provides citizens with strong incentives to work longer hours (thus increasing labor), to save and invest more of their income (thus increasing capital), and to devote more attention to innovation of all kinds (thus increasing efficiency, or TFP). — David A. Moss

I try to motivate people and align our individual incentives with organizational incentives. And then let people do their best. — John Liu

I said it's impossible to have an amnesty without ID cards and a clean database, because you firstly don't have any incentives for people to actually come up front and register, and make themselves available, and secondly you have no means of tracking them. — David Blunkett

When you're managing a large number of people, you learn that incentives matter tremendously. You really want people to be rewarded for doing the right thing for the customers and the organization. — Ramez Naam

It's just economics 101: When it's free to pollute, you get more pollution. But when there's a price to pay, industry will have an incentive to find low-cost carbon solutions. — Fred Krupp

It's a tremendous way of getting people to buy more at lower cost to the producer. There's no question that that's an incentive to buy. Everybody loves a bargain. — Marion Nestle

If there is a real desire, if the thing desired is really light, the desire for light produces it. There is a real desire when there is an effort of attention. It is really light that is desired if all other incentives are absent. — Simone Weil

The intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or false. The importance of the strength of our conviction is only to provide a proportionately strong incentive to find out if the hypothesis will stand up to critical evaluation. — Peter Medawar

During the 1990s the United States sought to impose the 'Washington Consensus' on Latin American governments. It embodied what Latin Americans call 'neo-liberal' principles: budget cuts, privatization, deregulation of business, and incentives for foreign companies. This campaign sparked bitter resistance and ultimately collapsed. — Stephen Kinzer

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers
or should I say, nurses?
will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us. — C.S. Lewis

Not that incentives are always so easy to figure out. Different types of incentives - financial, social, moral, legal, and others - push people's buttons in different directions, in different magnitudes. An incentive that works beautifully in one setting may backfire in another. — Anonymous

When you teach, you need to give the students incentives by grades or by other factors. I went to the Bible to find that topic in Scripture. I was shocked that after college and graduate school I had no idea that Jesus Christ had talked so much about rewards. — Bruce Wilkinson

We ought to care for those closest to us in terms of relatedness. After our immediate family, we ought to pursue our calling diligently as employees and provide just incentives (perhaps through profit-sharing) and reasonable care for our workers as employers. We should seek the wisdom of teachers and elders in society and look to them for leadership, while rejecting their folly when it is discerned. We must put our children and their education, both at home and in school, before our own entertainment, pleasure, and success. We ought not to tolerate insolence or haughtiness in them; nor ought we to punish them too severely, but should lead them as good teachers, by example and patient instruction. — Michael S. Horton

Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well. — Timothy Snyder

Kids who are poor often have families that have not really been kept informed about ... how important it is to read to your child, to reduce stresses in their life, to use positive incentives and words. — Geoffrey Canada

Lets take away the incentives to do 'to' patients and instead create incentives to do 'for' patients, to be 'with' patients. We don't need to do comparative effectiveness trials to see if that works; we can just ask patients. — Abraham Verghese

We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

So, ignorant we are. But we're not stupid. Indeed ... remaining ignorant about politics and our government is a perfectly rational response to the government we have. The question isn't what we know. The question is what we're capable of knowing, and doing, if we have the right incentives, and the right opportunity. — Lawrence Lessig

Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives. — Charlie Munger

With such incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat - assured of success. General commanding — Shelby Foote

It is an unquestioned assumption that managers should have and set targets and then create control systems - incentives, performance appraisals, budget reporting and computers to keep track of them all - to ensure the targets are met. In Toyota, these practices simply do not exist. To — John Seddon

The most difficult thing is to recognize that sometimes we too are blinded by our own incentives. Because we don't see how our conflicts of interest work on us. — Dan Ariely

Other and more powerful forms of association have existed, but the major moral and psychological influences on the individual's life have emanated from the family and local community and the church. Within such groups have been engendered the primary types of identification: affection, friendship, prestige, recognition. And within them also have been engendered or intensified the principal incentives of work, love, prayer, and devotion to freedom and order. — Robert A. Nisbet

Virtue is increased by the smile of approval; and the love of renown is the greatest incentive to honourable acts. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I understand how difficult it can be for an African-American in today's society. In fact, I can relate to black people very well indeed. My ancestors once owned slaves, and it is in my lineage to work closely with the black community. However, just because they were freed over a century ago doesn't mean they can now be freeloaders. They need to be told to work hard, and the incentives just aren't there for them anymore. When I'm president I plan to work closely with the black community to bring a sense of pride and work ethic back into view for them. — Mitt Romney

We shouldn't be surprised if this kind of stoicism is of no interest whatsoever to the news, for it has sound commercial incentives for overemphasizing our vulnerability. — Alain De Botton

when we have no memory or little imagination of an alternative to a life centered on work, there are few incentives to reflect on why we work as we do and what we might wish to do instead. — Kathi Weeks

There are fundamental tensions between the biological reality of the planet and the economic reality. To some extent you can adapt the economy, create a new set of rules and incentives to send it down a better track, but finally people in the first world are going to have to consume a whole lot less. — Michael Pollan

The desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct; ... the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty. — Alexander Hamilton

The current administration has made the decision to cut dollars going for community development block grants, for various incentives to bring cities back. — Stephanie Tubbs Jones

The current regulations -- for companies, doctors and researchers -- create perverse incentives; and we'll have better luck fixing those broken systems than we will ever have trying to rid the world of avarice — Ben Goldacre

These four policy prescriptions - strengthening educational opportunities, revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, increasing federal funding for basic scientific research, and providing incentives for private-sector R&D - should in my view be top priorities as Congress and the Administration consider how to maintain the nation's leadership in science, technology, and innovation. — Bill Gates

One of the unfortunate things about creative writing courses is that they make people impatient. People feel that they have prepared themselves and that they must now do it. In fact there are positive incentives for doing so - universities are offering degrees for writing novels. — Robert Dessaix

What is clear is that business leaders must commit to champion change - to be transparent about their goals for change, to align their incentives systems to drive the change, and to make sure their work environments are flexible in a way that allows men and women who choose to work to be able to achieve all of their potential. — Beth Brooke

Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take. — Barney Frank

Making wise decisions requires more than incentives. It requires wisdom. — James Taranto

I have learned that human beings are all about incentives — Harlan Coben

I think we have to take a look at corporate law. We have to take a look at the incentives that we can perhaps use to encourage more longer term. — Hillary Clinton

Today, our incentives aren't set up well - you can make a lot of money burning fossil fuels, digging up wetlands, pumping fossil water out of aquifers that will take 10,000 years to recharge, overfishing species in international waters that are close to collapse, and so on. — Ramez Naam

The incentives are still rotten, and people are still paid to do things they shouldn't be doing. The reforms did not really address the incentives, the system is still dysfunctional and there are still behavioural issues that need to be addressed. — Michael Lewis

To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits. — Thomas Sowell

Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment, as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out, they've redlined it. Clearly, to break up the redlining process, there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk. — Jesse Jackson

The most overwhelming proof that tax incentives have a relatively minor effect on individual charity is the tremendous consistency over time of giving as a percentage of income. Although the tax code has changed frequently and dramatically over the past twenty-three years, giving as a share of personal income has hovered around 1.83 percent. This measure reached as high as 1.95 percent in 1989 and as low as 1.71 percent in 1985. The narrow range has persisted even though the top marginal tax rate has fluctuated in that period from between 28 and 70 percent. — John S. Barry

Capitalism drives the employers to do their worst to the employed, and the employed to do the least for them. And it boasts all the time of the incentive it provides to both to do their best! ... The reason the Capitalist system has worked so far without jamming for more than a few months at a time, and then only in places, is that it has not yet succeeded in making a conquest of human nature so complete that everybody acts on strictly business principles. — George Bernard Shaw

Skill teachers are made scarce by the belief in the value of
licenses. Certification constitutes a form of market manipulation and is plausible only to a schooled mind.
Most teachers of arts and trades are less skillful, less inventive, and less communicative than the best craftsmen
and tradesmen. Most high-school teachers of Spanish or French do not speak the language as correctly as their
pupils might after half a year of competent drills. Experimentsconducted by Angel Quintero in Puerto Rico
suggest that many young teen-agers, if given the proper incentives, programs, and access to tools, are better than
most schoolteachers at introducing their peers to the scientific exploration of plants, stars, and matter, and to the
discovery of how and why a motor or a radio functions. — Ivan Illich

So, we're saying, if we can give developers and builders incentives to cut down on the regulatory barriers that are faced in this country, then we might be able to address the needs of affordable housing. — Alphonso Jackson

We also have no incentive compensation of any kind. And the reason we don't is because it is detrimental to teamwork. — Jeff Bezos

The incentive for the outsider is to attack the system right up to the moment he is co-opted by it. The incentive for the insider -and this took some getting used to- is to allow yourself to be attacked, and then co-opt your most ferocious attackers, and their best ideas. The effect on the system as a whole is to make it more stable, because everyone winds up working on its behalf. — Michael Lewis

take the opposite approach: Voters' lack of decisiveness changes everything. Voting is not a slight variation on shopping. Shoppers have incentives to be rational. Voters do not. The naive view of democracy, which paints it as a public forum for solving social problems, ignores more than a few frictions. It overlooks the big story inches beneath the surface. When voters talk about solving social problems, they primary aim is to boost their self-worth by casting off the workaday shackles of objectivity. — Bryan Caplan