IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rau/rseijr/v1y2014i1p72-87.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Incentives And The Economic Point Of View: The Case Of Popular Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew McCaffrey

    (University of Manchester, Booth St W, Manchester)

Abstract

This paper critically examines some underlying assumptions of the “popular” economics writing of recent years, e.g. the Freakonomics literature. I examine two problems that emerge from these writings. First, popular economics is myopic in that it views incentives as the fundamental economic concept. This focus can place misleading emphasis on only one relevant economic problem, while neglecting other important facts, such as (a) institutional arrangements that determine the pattern of incentives, and (b) economic laws that render the pattern irrelevant. Second, the literature includes hidden value judgments resulting from assumptions about incentives. As a result, economic analysis is sometimes falsely confused with ethics, or includes normative judgments not implied by economics proper. This problem in turn influences the portrayal of economics as a science.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew McCaffrey, 2014. "Incentives And The Economic Point Of View: The Case Of Popular Economics," Review of Social and Economic Issues, Romanian-American University, vol. 1(1), pages 72-87, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:rau:rseijr:v:1:y:2014:i:1:p:72-87
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rebe.rau.ro/RePEc/rau/rseijr/SU14/RSEI-SU14-A3.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becker, Gary S, 1993. "Nobel Lecture: The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 385-409, June.
    2. Hurwicz, Leonid, 1973. "The Design of Mechanisms for Resource Allocation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 1-30, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Dustan & Juan Manuel Hernandez-Agramonte & Stanislao Maldonado, 2018. "Motivating bureaucrats with non-monetary incentives when state capacity is weak: Evidence from large-scale," Natural Field Experiments 00664, The Field Experiments Website.
    2. Dustan, Andrew & Maldonado, Stanislao & Hernandez-Agramonte, Juan Manuel, 2018. "Motivating bureaucrats with non-monetary incentives when state capacity is weak: Evidence from large-scale field experiments in Peru," MPRA Paper 90952, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrea Attar & Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié, 2020. "The Social Costs of Side Trading," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(630), pages 1608-1622.
    2. Cornelia Serena, PASCA, 2016. "The Human Capital - A Long Term Investment," Contemporary Economy Journal, Constantin Brancoveanu University, vol. 1(4), pages 51-62.
    3. Robert Cooter & Winand Emons, 2004. "Truth-Bonding and Other Truth-Revealing Mechanisms for Courts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 307-327, May.
    4. Warr, Peter G., 1974. "The Economics Of Shadow Pricing: Market Distortions And Public Investment," Staff Papers 14116, University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics.
    5. Douglas Cumming & Lars Hornuf & Moein Karami & Denis Schweizer, 2023. "Disentangling Crowdfunding from Fraudfunding," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 182(4), pages 1103-1128, February.
    6. Paul Schumann & Lars Kuchinke, 2020. "Do(n’t) Worry, It’s Temporary: The Effects of Fixed-Term Employment on Affective Well-Being," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(7), pages 2557-2582, October.
    7. Tian, Guoqiang, 2004. "On the Informational Requirements of Decentralized Pareto-Satisfactory Mechanisms in Economies with Increasing Returns," MPRA Paper 41226, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2006.
    8. Marjit, Sugata & Mukherjee, Vivekananda & Mukherjee, Arijit, 2000. "Harassment, corruption and tax policy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 75-94, March.
    9. Cheal, David & Kampen, Karen, 1997. "Complementarity in the labor supply of husbands and wives," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 495-512.
    10. Jin, Justin & Nainar, Khalid & Sun, Chenwei, 2022. "Bank non-performing loans, loan charge-offs, and crime incidence," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    11. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2017. "Family Economics Writ Large," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1346-1434, December.
    12. Enrique Leonardo Kato Vidal, 2015. "Violence in Mexico: An economic rationale of crime and its impacts," EconoQuantum, Revista de Economia y Finanzas, Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Economico Administrativas, Departamento de Metodos Cuantitativos y Maestria en Economia., vol. 12(2), pages 93-108, Julio-Dic.
    13. Will, Matthias Georg & Hielscher, Stefan, 2013. "How do companies invest in corporate social responsibility? An ordonomic contribution for empirical CSR research," Discussion Papers 2013-3, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Chair of Economic Ethics.
    14. Chorus, Caspar & van Cranenburgh, Sander & Daniel, Aemiro Melkamu & Sandorf, Erlend Dancke & Sobhani, Anae & Szép, Teodóra, 2021. "Obfuscation maximization-based decision-making: Theory, methodology and first empirical evidence," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 28-44.
    15. Guido Tabellini, 2007. "The Scope of Cooperation: Norms and Incentives," Levine's Working Paper Archive 321307000000000866, David K. Levine.
    16. Ferry Prasetyia, 2019. "The role of local government policy on secondary school enrolment decision in Indonesia," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 9(2), pages 139-172, June.
    17. W. Michael Hanemann, 1994. "Valuing the Environment through Contingent Valuation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 19-43, Fall.
    18. Carlos Brambila-Paz, 2017. "Households, Families and Prospective Economic Mobility in Mexico," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 38(4), pages 582-595, December.
    19. Bouzguenda, Karima, 2018. "Emotional intelligence and financial decision making: Are we talking about a paradigmatic shift or a change in practices?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 273-284.
    20. Funk, Matt, 2008. "On the Problem of Sustainable Economic Development: A Theoretical Solution to this Prisoner's Dilemma," MPRA Paper 19025, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Jun 2008.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rau:rseijr:v:1:y:2014:i:1:p:72-87. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alex Tabusca (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frrauro.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.