The Why Axis

Uri Gneezy was born and reared in Israel, where he learned firsthand about applied game theory on the streets of Tel Aviv. Dr. Gneezy is the Epstein/Atkinson Endowed Chair in Behavioral Economics and a professor of economics and strategy at the University of California, San Diego's Rady School of Management.

John A. List was raised in a working-class family in Wisconsin, where his father hauled trucks for a living, and studied economics in hobby markets. Dr. List is the University of Chicago's Homer J. Livingston Professor of Economics.

Can economics be exciting? Can it focus on individuals and what truly important to them on a daily basis? And can you assist us comprehend their secret motivations for doing what they do in everyday life?

Revolutionaries are Uri Gneezy and John List. Their concepts and methods for determining what truly works in tackling major social, business, and economic challenges provide us with a new understanding of the motivations that drive human action. We can then design incentives that motivate people to move mountains, change their behavior, or at the very least obtain a better deal.

Finding the appropriate incentive, on the other hand, can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Gneezy and List's innovative method involves embedding themselves in industries, schools, towns, and offices where people work, live, and play. Then, in large-scale field tests conducted "in the wild," Gneezy and List watch people in their natural situations without their knowledge.

Their randomized experiments have revealed ways to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students, to reduce violence in inner-city schools, to determine whether women are truly less competitive than men, to price products and services correctly, and to discover the true reasons why people discriminate.

Gneezy and List boarded flights, helicopters, trains, and vehicles to travel from the mountains of Kilimanjaro to California wineries; from hot northern India to the frigid streets of Chicago; and from Israeli school playgrounds to the boardrooms of some of the world's largest enterprises. They take us along for the voyage in The Why Axis, presenting lessons with significant payoffs through fascinating and colorful stories. The book is among the best books on behavioral economics.

Their groundbreaking, shocking, and urgent revelations about how incentives really function are both revolutionary and enormously useful. This study will alter how we think about and respond to large and little challenges. Instead of making assumptions, we can use evidence to discover what truly works. The technique Gneezy and List explain in The Why Axis can be used by anybody working in business, politics, education, or philanthropy to get a deeper, nuanced understanding of human behavior, as well as a better understanding of what motivates individuals and why.

Author: John A. List and Uri Gneezy

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1610393112/

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