{"id":640,"date":"2014-06-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brand-genetics.test\/superfreakonomics-speed-summary\/"},"modified":"2019-11-19T16:32:55","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T16:32:55","slug":"superfreakonomics-speed-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandgenetics.com\/pt\/superfreakonomics-speed-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"Superfreakonomics [Speed Summary]"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Superfreakonomics:\u00a0Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance<\/li>\n<li>Author:\u00a0Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner<\/li>\n<li>Publisher:\u00a0William Morrow<\/li>\n<li>Publication date: 2009<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In a followup to their bestselling Freakonomics (<a href=\"http:\/\/brandgenetics.preview.uk.com\/freakonomics-a-rogue-economist-explores-the-hidden-side-of-everything-speed-summary\/\">speed summary<\/a>) economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner explore how incentives and\u00a0the laws of supply and demand\u00a0are key to understanding and changing behaviour.<\/p>\n<h3>Homo-Economicus<\/h3>\n<p>Rumours of the\u00a0death of homo-economicus (economic man) may have been\u00a0somewhat exaggerated. Sure, as consumers we&#8217;re not slaves to the laws of supply and demand (just because there&#8217;s more supply, doesn&#8217;t mean we&#8217;ll only pay less). Nor are we fixated with &#8216;value maximisation&#8217; (getting the best emotional (or material) bang for our buck). We&#8217;re lazy, habitual creatures &#8211; and sometimes good enough will do.<\/p>\n<p>But economics does matter, because we are incentive-driven creatures, motivated by the incentives that\u00a0markets offer us to behave in a particular way. \u00a0Understanding the incentive structures that motivate\u00a0behaviour\u00a0&#8211; whether those incentives are economic\u00a0(material\/financial gain), social\u00a0(reputational gain) or moral (conscience &#8216;gain&#8217; (feeling good about ourselves)) is key to understanding &#8211; and predicting &#8211; consumer behaviour<\/p>\n<h3>Sex Supply and Demand<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The increase in supply of &#8220;free&#8221; sex, due to increased pre-marital sex has had a downward pressure on prices paid for\u00a0sex in the sex trade over the last century<\/li>\n<li>Pressure on oral sex prices has been particularly extreme, as a\u00a0waning taboo for oral sex has further increased supply among regular sexual partners, thus reducing street prices &#8211; \u00a0down <a href=\"http:\/\/economics.uchicago.edu\/pdf\/Prostitution%205.pdf\">to\u00a0just $40 in Chicago<\/a><\/li>\n<li>On public holidays, like the Fourth of July, demand for sex increases, and sex workers increase their prices by 30% (this &#8216;demand shock&#8217; also brings more supply into the market as people not usually working in the industry temporarily supplement their income by offering\u00a0sex)<\/li>\n<li>Because the sex industry is a black market, supply is constrained, keeping prices attractively high (roughly 4x basic wages). \u00a0To ensure light touch policing, 3% of sex acts are promotional &#8216;freebies&#8217; given to police &#8211; sex workers are more likely to have sex with police officers than be arrested by them<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Incentives not Altruism<\/h3>\n<p>Why do people help each other? \u00a0Because they are incentivised to do so &#8211; whether it&#8217;s a moral incentive (to not feel guilty), a social incentive (to boost reputation), or even an economic incentive &#8211; as is the case of kidney donations in Iran. \u00a0In the US, there are\u00a0 80,000 people in need of a kidney, but only 16,000 transplants take place each year. \u00a0In Iran, donors are paid, and there is no waiting list. \u00a0Rather than ascribe helping behaviour to selfless altruism, we need to look for the incentives driving that behaviour.\u00a0And when there are no incentives to help, we don&#8217;t &#8211; as was the case of the\u00a0Kitty Genovese murder witnessed by 38 people watching &#8211; but who did precisely nothing to help. \u00a0No incentive, no action. \u00a0Finally, such is the power of incentives, and the expectation we will act according to incentives, we can\u00a0use incentivised behaviour to mask our true behaviour. \u00a0For example, suicide terrorists have no incentive to\u00a0take out life insurance (not covered!), but they should do so since not taking out life insurance is now used in algorithms to identify potential terrorists from financial data.<\/p>\n<h3>Simple Solutions<\/h3>\n<p>To change behaviour, you not only need incentives &#8211; but simple solutions. \u00a0Complex solutions rarely work &#8211; because of the disincentive to learn, acquire and master them. \u00a0Simple solutions are also often the cheapest. \u00a0For example, the seatbelt was\u00a0a simple solution that reduced the risk of car fatalities by 70% &#8211; with minimal disincentives to use it. Likewise washing hands before surgery was a simple low-cost solution &#8211; with little disincentive to adoption &#8211; that has significantly\u00a0reduced post-surgery complications. \u00a0On the other hand, reducing green house gasses to manage global warming could be\u00a0costly\u00a0and\u00a0complicated,\u00a0and it&#8217;s currently without compelling incentives to drive behaviour. Could it be better to look for a simpler, low-cost (but controversial) solution &#8211; such\u00a0as a &#8216;geo-engineering&#8217; approach that involves injecting sulfur dioxide directly into the stratosphere?\u00a0Simple (relatively) low-cost solutions are usually the best.<\/p>\n<h3>The Brand Genetics Take<\/h3>\n<p>Like Freakonomics, Superfreakonomics shows the power of looking at behaviour and behavioural data through the lens of incentives &#8211; economic, social and moral &#8211; to uncover rich insight.\u00a0For example, national data shows that learning\u00a0disabilities vary by month of birth, and it turns out that this may be due to moral and social incentives for Muslim women in early pregnancy to adhere to Ramadan fasting. \u00a0Whilst the authors have been criticised for the veracity of some of their insights, particularly around global warming, their look-for-the-incentives approach to insight hunting yields fresh and exciting ideas. \u00a0And we feel thoroughly \u00a0incentivised to adopt incentive-led insight as an approach at Brand Genetics.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Superfreakonomics:\u00a0Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance Author:\u00a0Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Publisher:\u00a0William Morrow Publication date: 2009 In a followup to their bestselling Freakonomics (speed summary) economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner explore how incentives and\u00a0the laws of supply and demand\u00a0are key to understanding and changing behaviour. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speed-summaries"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Superfreakonomics [Speed Summary] - Brand Genetics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/brandgenetics.com\/pt\/superfreakonomics-speed-summary\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"pt_BR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Superfreakonomics [Speed Summary] - Brand Genetics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Superfreakonomics:\u00a0Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance Author:\u00a0Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Publisher:\u00a0William Morrow Publication date: 2009 In a followup to their bestselling Freakonomics (speed summary) economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner explore how incentives and\u00a0the laws of supply and demand\u00a0are key to understanding and changing behaviour. 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