The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life

Product Description
Two of Forbes Magazine’s “world’s most powerful economists” provide the breakthrough ideas tochallenge the assumptions of human decision-making
In this groundbreaking book, lauded behavioural economists Uri Gneezy and John List uncover what motivates people and, most importantly, why and how the right incentives can work to change behaviour and effect the world around us. Called the “Indiana Joneses of economics” because of their unorthodox approach, Gneezy and List have travelled the world conducting field experiments in order to study people’s actions in their natural environments. Through their original research, Gneezy and List have sought the answers to everything from life’s big-issue questions—the problems of discrimination, gender inequality, low rates of charitable giving—to everyday business issues such as low workplace productivity and price setting, all through the lenses of motivation and incentive. Their work is both revolutionary and immensely practical. It allows us to take action on big and little problems in ways that will no longer rely on assumptions but on the evidence of what really works to create change.
By uncovering ways to improve people’s behavior through the right incentives, Gneezy and List have given us the tools to change our schools, our neighbourhoods, our businesses and our world for the better.
About the Author
URI GNEEZY is the Atkinson/Epstein endowed chair in behavioural economics and professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego. Before joining the Rady School, Gneezy was a faculty member at the University of Chicago, and at the Israeli universities Technion and Haifa.


URI GNEEZY is the Atkinson/Epstein endowed chair in behavioural economics and professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego. Before joining the Rady School, Gneezy was a faculty member at the University of Chicago, and at theIsraeli universities Technion and Haifa. JOHN LIST is the Homer J. Livingston professor of economics at the University of Chicago. He has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics (NBER) for more than a decade and served as senior economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers for environmental and resource economics. Quite independently, they developed a similar approach to understanding the world, and they have now been working together for ten years. Their work has stimulated an entirely new area of study devoted to exploring people’s economic behavior in naturally occurring environments.