Credit An enormous amount of credit goes to johnswentworth who made this new post possible. This is a framing practicum post. We’ll talk about what incentives are, how to recognize incentives in the wild, and what questions to ask when you find them. Then, we’ll have a challenge to apply the idea. Today’s challenge: come up with 3 examples of incentives which do not resemble any you’ve seen before. They don’t need to be good, they don’t need to be useful, they just need to be novel (to you). Expected time: ~15-30 minutes at most, including the Bonus Exercise. What Are Incentives? At the beginning of a sowing season, the Government of India announces a list of guaranteed purchase prices for certain crops, e.g., rice, wheat, cotton, etc., to support farmers. In case the market price for a crop falls below the guaranteed purchase price, the government agencies purchase the entire quantity from farmers if the crop quality meets a minimum quality threshold. From an Indian farmer’s perspective, the farmer is encouraged to produce price supported crops with quality just above the threshold level set by the government - and no higher. This is an economic incentive: There is a reward signal in the system. Farmers are rewarded for producing crops just above the quality threshold. On the other hand, they are not rewarded for producing higher quality crops. Here we see the defining features of incentives: A system (a farmer) “wants” some resource (money), and can get more of that resource in return for some actions (producing crops with quality just above the threshold level) than others (producing crops with quality well above the threshold level). Another example, with a direct notion of “reward”: cash incentive for taking Covid-19 vaccine shots. Some states in the US are offering rewards for Covid-19 vaccination in the form of direct cash or lottery programs. We can identify a clear reward signal in the system, which is people get rewarded for taking vaccines. H