Incentivology: The Forces That Explain Tremendous Success and Spectacular Failure
by Jason Murphy  (Author)

About the Author
Jason Murphy trained as an econo-mist and began his career at the Australian Treasury but soon broke out of the public service. He once lived in Nauru. He has written for the Australian Financial Review, The Guardian, Crikey.com.au and many other publications. Incentivology is his first book.

About this book
Rewards. Punishments. Prices. The Nobel Prize. Candy Crush. Incentives take more forms than you might expect and they can be hard to spot, but they shape our lives in ways that we rarely examine.
Some incentives are obvious, like for example, publicly committing to doing something you dislike in order to motivate you to do something difficult, like lose weight. But, many of the most powerful incentives are accidental, and invisible even to those who designed them. Some are tame - and some are most definitely not. Whether it s bounties for criminals or Instagrammable meals, training your dog or saving the planet, incentives regularly backfire, go missing, mutate and evolve. Without oversight, their unintended consequences can have very global effects.
In Incentivology, econo-mist Jason Murphy uncovers the huge incentive systems we take for granted and turns them inside out. In lively, entertaining prose he explores the mechanisms behind many spectacular failures and successes in our history, culture and everyday lives, and shows us how to use (or lose) incentives in our world at large.

Brief contents
Introduction
Part 1: Incentives in Theory
Chapter 1: The Power of Incentives
Chapter 2: A Perverse Inclination
Chapter 3: Unintentional
Chapter 4: Missing Incentives
Chapter 5: Your Brain on Incentives
Interlude: A Mannish Jape
Part 2: Incentives in Action
Chapter 6: Less Than a Loaf of Bread
Chapter 7: Crazy Bargains (and Crazy Luxury)
Chapter 8: Only the Fittest Survive
Interlude: Dog
Chapter 9: Self-perpetuating Incentives
Chapter 10: Corruption and Rot
Chapter 11: Justice
Chapter 12: Injustice, Armour and Fire
Interlude: The Hunger Games
Chapter 13: Climate Change
Chapter 14: Ostrom
Conclusion: That Ball is Still in the Air
Acknowledgements
Endnotes

Pages: 288 pages
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books (July 25, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1743794991
ISBN-13: 978-1743794999