Book review – the why axis: Hidden Motives and the undiscovered economics of everyday life

Hidden motives and undiscovered economics of everyday life. Intriguing subtitle isn’t it? But it’s the way the authors discover what motivates people to do things , via field experiments. To see what works if you want to motivate people to behave a certain way.

It seems logical to try stuff out and see what works and what not. But for economy it’s always been more about reasoning and building mathematical stuff to see if it holds up. And changing some parameters and checking what this does with the outcome.

This book is about real world field experiments with control groups. It’s the just trying and seeing what works. It’s about stimulating behavior which is good for people by means of rewards.

Apart from the rewards , it’s also about who you need to motivate and seeing what else is necessary , how to formulate the proposition for instance.

The book covers experiments with discrimination, education, crime and so on. It’s easy to read and understandable for everyone. It’s a book you can read if you don’t want to read a thriller or a heavy scientific book.

It’s nicely sets the argument for more field experiments to really see what happens in real life and what works and what not. In stead of just reasoning everything to the last comma. This goes for everyone, just experiment and do stuff.