Freakonomics Post 1

Due to me having an 82 in Economics class, I decided to read the book Freakonomics by Steven Levit and Stephen Dubner. To be honest, I was not so happy about having to read and blog about it at first, but I have enjoyed reading it do far. So to get the extra credit, I am going to blog about each chapter as I finish it. So here is Chapter 1's post!

Chapter one is titled: "Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers" and focuses on the presence of incentives and cheating in our economy through real life examples. First Levit and Dubner spoke about how they tried to instill a fine in day cares in Israel to parents who picked up their child more than 10 minutes late. Hoping to find the number of late parents drop, the exact opposite was found. The number rose because parents felt that they could pay off their conscience with only 1/3 of their monthly bill. Then they spoke about Chicago teachers who cheated by fixing their student's standardized tests. You see, since the No Child Left Behind Act was enforced, stating that teachers and schools would receive money based on their students' test scores, so if a teacher had a poor class, they would, sometimes, change incorrect answers on their students' Iowa tests. The authors then related that to Sumo Wrestlers in Japan. If one is an elitist sumo wrestler in Japan, that person is served by the lower wrestlers. Also, being a top wrestler pays more, therefore, giving a sumo wrestler the same incentive the school teacher does: money. The final point brought up in the chapter on cheating was the story of Paul Feldman, who would sell bagels for a dollar apiece to business who then sold them to their employees. Feldman would deliver the bagels in the morning along with a wooden box to put the payment in. When Feldman came back in the afternoon, he found that about 87% of the money that ought to be there was and that the smaller businesses had the higher percentage.
After reading this chapter, I already have a high respect for the authors and their ideas on life. I agree with everything they touched on and was surprised at some of the things I learned in this chapter, like that incentives are everything. Without an incentive like money, why would someone work?