UC San Diego behavioral economist Uri Gneezy explores this baffling question in MIXED SIGNALS: How Incentives Really Work (Yale University Press; March 21st, 2023).

Consider the CEO who urges teamwork but designs incentives for individual success, who invites innovation but punishes failure, who emphasizes quality but pays for quantity. Employing real-world scenarios just like this to illustrate this everyday phenomenon, Gneezy explains why incentives often fail and demonstrates how the right incentives can change behavior.

Drawing on behavioral economics, game theory, psychology, and fieldwork, Gneezy outlines how to design rewards that are simple and effective. He highlights how the right combination of economic and psychological incentives can encourage people to drive more fuel-efficient cars, be more innovative at work, and even get to the gym. “Incentives send a signal,” Gneezy writes, “and your objective is to make sure this signal is aligned with your goals.”

MIXED SIGNALS shows how anyone can design effective and ethical incentives and why we need them.

The talk will start at 5:30 PM with a reception and book signing to follow. First 200 guests will receive a free copy of the book (must RSVP).

Uri Gneezy is the Epstein/Atkinson Endowed Chair in Behavioral Economics and professor at the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego. He received his B.A. in economics at Tel Aviv University and Ph.D. in economics at Tilburg University. Gneezy joined UC San Diego in 2006. Prior to that, he was a professor at the University of Chicago, the Technion and the University of Haifa. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam, NHH Bergen and Burgundy School of Business.

Gneezy’s research includes over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, for which he won the Most Highly Cited Researcher prize for the last 8 years. He is a coauthor (with John List) of the international best seller The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life and author of the forthcoming Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work (March 2023).

Mixed Signals -- How Incentives Really Work