On 23 June 2016, the renowned Law and Economics scholar Ian Ayres (Yale University) visited Erasmus University Rotterdam as a guest of the BACT and DOPAS programs
Prof. Ayres gave a guest lecture on “Carrots and Sticks: more than just setting the right price” as part of the International Lecture Series of Public Administration and Sociology. Moreover, the same day Prof. Ayres participated in a small-scale masterclass dedicated to PhD students in which four young researchers had the opportunity to discuss with him on-going projects
Summery guest lecture
Could you lose weight if you put $20,000 at risk? Would you finally set up your billing software if it meant that your favorite charity would earn a new contribution? If you have ever tried to meet a goal and came up short, the problem may not have been that the goal was too difficult or that you lacked the discipline to succeed. From giving up cigarettes to increasing your productivity at work, you may simply have neglected to give yourself the proper incentives. In his guest lecture, prof. Ayres applied the lessons learned from behavioral economics to introduce audience to the concept of “commitment contracts”: an easy but high-powered strategy for setting and achieving goals already in use by successful companies and individuals across America.
About prof. Ayres
Prof. Ayres is a lawyer and an economist. He is the William K. Townsend Professor at Yale Law School, the Anne Urowsky Professorial Fellow in Law, and a Professor at Yale's School of Management. He has been a columnist for Forbes magazine, a commentator on public radio’s Marketplace, and a contributor to the New York Times' Freakonomics Blog. Professor Ayres’ research has been featured on Prime Time Live, Oprah and Good Morning America and in Time and Vogue magazines. He has published 11 books (including the New York Times best-seller, Super Crunchers) and over 100 articles on a wide range of topics.