Nonetheless, I found today's lecture to be quite interesting in a number of ways. Here is a little bit about what I gleaned from Professor Rizzo.
Class started off when Prof. Rizzo threw money around the room towards students. The "throw-down" began with a penny, followed by a nickel, quarter, 2 quarters, a dollar bill, and finally, a five dollar bill.
Of course, few students went after the lower amounts of money that Prof. Rizzo offered, but when a dollar bill and a five dollar bill were at stake, several students began begging for the money. Upon Prof. Rizzo's release of the money, several students even charged after the cash in hopes of getting to the money first.
While the game may have seemed like just an entertaining and innovative way for Prof. Rizzo to introduce himself to the class, it had a lot more meaning than just that.
Prof. Rizzo, as he stated a number of times in class, was trying to demonstrate a very important principle of economics: the fact that people are willing to do more things/work when greater incentives are at stake. Prof. Rizzo's exercise perfectly exemplified that postulate perfectly, as people ran after/begged more frequently for the money as the cash value increased.
This led Prof. Rizzo to discuss how a major fact of human nature is how it is instinct for people to respond to incentives. But incentives don't just have to be monetary. One example Prof. Rizzo shared in class was how an incentive of showering is that a person may feel more awake.
The bottom line is that every decision has an incentive in some way and, in short, people in this world make decisions hoping to attain some sort of incentive.
One other thing to note is Prof. Rizzo's emphasis in class on one of the meanings of economics. He described economics in one regard as "The ways people behave and the ways people react to those behaviors."
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