Incentives : Motivation and the Economics of Information

This book investigates situations in which incentives, contracts, and other economic devices are used to further the pursuit of self-interest.

This book investigates situations in which incentives, contracts or other economic devices can be employed in a wide range of settings to prevent the pursuit of self-interest from being institutionally- or self-defeating, including the operation of insurance markets, voting, auctions, general resource allocation, public goods, labor markets, higher education, the savings-and-loan crisis, and managers'' and shareholders'' behavior. Professor Campbell''s treatment of these issues in the economics of information, mechanism design, and game theory may be followed by anyone with a basic knowledge of single-variable calculus and microeconomic theory. Readers learn by working carefully through examples to grasp economic principles, rather than by following proofs of general theorems. Upper-level undergraduates, master''s-level students, and graduate students seeking supplementary reading in practice-oriented economic theory will find the material particularly useful.