Prosocial motivation and incentives

Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This review explores the role of incentives in providing goods and services that have significant social returns not captured in private returns, and where outcomes and performances are not easy to measure. We discuss how the presence of prosocial motivation among agents involved in the provision of these goods and services changes the design of incentives. The review also emphasises how heterogeneous prosocial motivation puts a premium on selection of agents in this context. We also discuss alternative theories of prosocial motivation.

Keywords: prosocial behavior; motivated agents; public services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-res and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Published in Annual Review of Economics, 1, August, 2018, 10, pp. 411-438. ISSN: 1941-1383

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/90093/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Prosocial Motivation and Incentives (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:90093

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