The ethics of incentives: Historical origins and contemporary understandings
Economics and Philosophy 18 (1):111-139 (2002)
| Abstract | Increasingly in the modern world, incentives are becoming the tool we reach for when we wish to bring about change. In government, in education, in health care, between and within institutions of all sorts, incentives are offered to steer people's choices in certain directions. But despite the increasing interest in ethics and economics, the ethics of the use of incentives has raised very little concern. From a certain point of view, this is not surprising. When incentives are viewed from the perspective of market economics, they appear to be entirely unproblematic. An incentive is an offer of something of value, sometimes with a cash equivalent and sometimes not, meant to influence the payoff structure of a utility calculation so as to alter a person's course of action. In other words, the person offering the incentive means to make one choice more attractive to the person responding to the incentive than any other alternative. Both parties stand to gain from the resulting choice. In effect, it is a form of trade, and as such, it meets certain ethical requirements by definition. A trade involves voluntary action by all parties concerned to bring about a result that is beneficial to all parties concerned. If these conditions were not met, the trade would simply not occur. And as inducements in a voluntary transaction, incentives certainly have the moral high ground over coercion as an alternative | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesKristin M. Madison, Kevin G. Volpp & Scott D. Halpern (2011). The Law, Policy, and Ethics of Employers' Use of Financial Incentives to Improve Health. Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 39 (3):450-468.
Heather Elms, Shawn Berman & Andrew C. Wicks (2002). Ethics and Incentives: An Evaluation and Development of Stakeholder Theory in the Health Care Industry. Business Ethics Quarterly 12 (4):413-432.
Andrew C. Wicks (2002). Ethics and Incentives. Business Ethics Quarterly 12 (4):413-432.
John C. Ruhnka & Heidi Boerstler (1998). Governmental Incentives for Corporate Self Regulation. Journal of Business Ethics 17 (3):309-326.
George J. Agich (1987). Incentives and Obligations Under Prospective Payment. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 12 (2):123-144.
Praveen Kulshreshtha (2007). Economics, Ethics and Business Ethics: A Critique of Interrelationships. International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics 3 (1):33-41.
Praveen Kulshreshtha (2005). Business Ethics Versus Economic Incentives:Contemporary Issues and Dilemmas. Journal of Business Ethics 60 (4):393 - 410.
Robert M. Veatch (2003). Why Liberals Should Accept Financial Incentives for Organ Procurement. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13 (1):19-36.
Daniel Read (2005). Monetary Incentives, What Are They Good For? Journal of Economic Methodology 12 (2):265-276.
Ruth W. Grant & Jeremy Sugarman (2004). Ethics in Human Subjects Research: Do Incentives Matter? Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 29 (6):717 – 738.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads17 ( #71,062 of 549,067 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,185 of 549,067 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
