Conflict, sticks and carrots: war increases prosocial punishments and rewards.

Carrots and Sticks: Prizes and Punishments in Contests

We study optimal contest design in situations where the designer can reward high performance agents with positive prizes and punish low performance agents with negative prizes. We link the optimal prize structure to the curvature of distribution of abilities in the population. In particular, we identify conditions under which, even if punishment is costly, punishing the bottom is more effective...

Sticking with Carrots and Sticks (Sticking Points Aside): A Response to Ventakapuram, Goldberg, and Forrow

How to Commit (If You Must): Commitment Contracts and the Dual-Self Model

This paper studies how dual-self (Fudenberg and Levine (2006)) decision-makers can use commitment technologies to combat temptation and implement long-run optimal actions. I consider two types of such technologies: carrot contracts (rewards for ‘good’ behavior financed by borrowing from future consumption) and stick contracts (self imposed fines for ‘bad’ behavior). Both types of contracts can ...

Incentives and Prosocial Behavior

Incentives and Prosocial Behavior We develop a theory of prosocial behavior that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. Rewards or punishments (whether material or image-related) create doubt about the true motive for which good deeds are performed and this “overjustification effect” can induce a partial or even net crowding ...

Opposing effects of reward and punishment on human vigor

The vigor with which humans and animals engage in a task is often a determinant of the likelihood of the task's success. An influential theoretical model suggests that the speed and rate at which responses are made should depend on the availability of rewards and punishments. While vigor facilitates the gathering of rewards in a bountiful environment, there is an incentive to slow down when pun...