Looking for a motivated self-starter

I’ve seen this video from RSA Animate making the rounds at some of my favorite blog sites.  It’s from Dan Pink, and it gives an 11-minute, Johnny-on-the-spot animated primer on what motivates us.  It’s not actually animation, more like watching someone pretend to animate something, with real cartoon-like pictures being the result. Watching it is quite mesmerizing, and it’s probably more interesting than whatever you’d otherwise be doing for the next few minutes.

The big take home message is that higher-powered incentives don’t necessarily translate into better performance, specifically when “big brain” tasks are involved. Research indicates that people like autonomy in what they are doing and gain non-pecuniary satisfaction from a sense of accomplishment.   Open source success stories like Linux and Wikipedia seem to bear this out.  On the other hand, there seems to be a fundamental tension between an organization’s objective function and individual autonomy.  If they aren’t aligned well, then we wouldn’t expect much innovation that benefits the firm.

So, let’s think about this some more, and meanwhile, enjoy the cool cartoons.  Here is the full collection.

Professor Gerard has posted numerous articles on regulatory policy,  some of which rest on the theme that regulators will be captured by the industries they are assigned to regulate.  Simon Johnson, in today’s   Economix  blog, focuses on both oil and financial regulation.  He argues that living wills, that is strategies businesses might design to deal with their own failures, are not the solution for either industry.  He notes that oil companies other than BP had similar plans for managing the risks of a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  In fact, many had hired the same consultant to write their plans.  Such plans demonstrated limited knowledge of the Gulf as well as limited preparedness.  Stated differently, they had very little incentive to write constructive plans.

If we want private companies to respond to potential catastrophes or even continuous negative externalities, we need public policy that encourages them to do just that.  Of course,  such public action requires that our legislators and the Executive branch need to both address the societal tradeoffs our nation must face and face-down the lobbyists who seek to postpone such action.  Perhaps our policy makers should be tested to see if they support the manifesto for the  Pigou Club or a bit smaller challenge, if they know Pigou’s contribution to welfare economics.

Slate has an amusing piece on what political coverage would look like if political scientists wrote it. Here’s just a taste:

Democrats hope that passing health care and financial regulatory reform will give them enough momentum to win in November. Unfortunately, there’s little relationship between legislative victories and electoral victories. Also, what the hell is “momentum”?

Prospects for an energy bill, meanwhile, are looking grim, since Obama has spent all his political capital. He used to have a lot. Now it’s gone. Why winning legislative battles builds momentum but saps political capital, I have no idea. Just go with it.

In related news, things are heating up in Oshkosh.