We present a novel model capable of distinguishing between the effects of negative incentives (“sticks”) and positive incentives (“carrots”) for influencing the behavior of intelligent and adaptable adversaries. Utilities are developed for the defender and the terrorist. The defender is assumed to have a unit cost of defense, and unit costs of providing negative and positive incentives. The ter...

Although positive incentives for cooperators and/or negative incentives for free-riders in social dilemmas play an important role in maintaining cooperation, there is still the outstanding issue of who should pay the cost of incentives. The second-order free-rider problem, in which players who do not provide the incentives dominate in a game, is a well-known academic challenge. In order to meet...

We report an experiment in 3,000 villages that tested whether incentives improve aid efficacy. Villages received block grants for maternal and child health and education that incorporated relative performance incentives. Subdistricts were randomized into incentives, an otherwise identical program without incentives, or control. Incentives initially improved preventative health indicators, parti...

The Varieties of Incentive Experience We often speak of incentives as if there is only one kind, when in reality there are many. This study uses the financial crisis of 2007-2012 as a laboratory for examining the variety of incentives and distinguishes five key types of incentives. First, are natural incentives in which purely non-human conditions provide incentives to act in certain ways. Seco...

We report an experiment in 3,000 villages that tested whether incentives improve aid efficacy. Villages received block grants for maternal and child health and education that incorporated relative performance incentives. Subdistricts were randomized into incentives, an otherwise identical program without incentives, or control. Incentives initially improved preventative health indicators, parti...

Although extrinsic and intrinsic motivation likely jointly explain the effort of many agents engaged in public service delivery, incentives typically only appeal to the former. In the context of a rural health worker program in India, I develop and test a novel, mobile phone-based selftracking app designed to increase agents’ intrinsic returns to effort. At ten months of follow-up, the self-tra...

We document a shift in the value assigned to intrinsic incentives: people value these incentives more inside an activity than outside the activity (i.e., during vs. before or after pursuit). For example, people care more about the level of interest of their present work task than of past or future work tasks. We document this shift across a variety of activities (exercising, visiting a museum, ...