{"id":43322,"date":"2020-07-28T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T05:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43322"},"modified":"2020-07-27T08:33:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T12:33:36","slug":"qotd-incentives-and-opportunity-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/07\/28\/qotd-incentives-and-opportunity-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Incentives and opportunity costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>The first and most important thing in all economics is that incentives matter. If you can grasp that and also get to grips with the second, that there are always opportunity costs, then you&#8217;re going to be doing better than 90% of the economics profession itself. But do remember that incentives matter, incentives really, really, matter. Changes in tax law have stopped people from dying for example.<\/p>\n<p>No, really, there was one of those natural experiments, when inheritance tax laws changed at the end of the year. There was a definite blip downwards in the death rate of people rich enough to pay inheritance tax at the end of the year, a corresponding one upwards again as the new, lower, rates came into effect in January. Incentives really, really, matter.<\/p>\n<p>Tim Worstall, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.continentaltelegraph.com\/uncategorized\/whats-the-over-and-under-on-teslas-200000th-car-being-delivered-on-july-1\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;What&#8217;s The Over And Under On Tesla&#8217;s 200,000th Car Being Delivered On July 1?&#8221;, <em>Continental Telegraph<\/em><\/a>, 2019-05-03.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first and most important thing in all economics is that incentives matter. If you can grasp that and also get to grips with the second, that there are always opportunity costs, then you&#8217;re going to be doing better than 90% of the economics profession itself. But do remember that incentives matter, incentives really, really, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[755,118,315],"class_list":["post-43322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-incentives","tag-taxes","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bgK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43322"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59132,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43322\/revisions\/59132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}