Call to Action: Intrinsic Motives and Material Interests

Abstract

We provide a game-theoretic account of endogenous intrinsic motivation within a principal–agent framework. We explore the incentives of an altruistic principal who, by exerting costly effort, can intrinsically motivate a present-biased agent to exhibit a direct preference for more far-sighted behaviour. We characterize the conditions under which this happens. We show that allowing for endogenous intrinsic motivation generates interesting interplays between exogenous economic incentives and endogenous motivation, including the possibility of crowding out. Our model can be applied in a wide variety of contexts, including public policy, self-control, and cultural transmission.

The Signaling Value of Punishing Norm-Breakers and Rewarding Norm-Followers

“…Differently from those works, in our setup parental behavior informs children about the behavior they are likely to encounter in the future in the future. This shares similarities with Adriani and Sonderegger (2018), and Kotsidis (2018) [17][18][19]. However, this paper studies the mechanics and the signaling value of punishment versus reward, and is thus very different in focus.…”

“…Note that we assume that children discount the future more heavily than adults. 19 This reflects the idea that age affects preferences and choice. Robson andSamuelson (2007, 2009) [40,41] study the evolution of discount rates and find that, under some natural conditions, these should fall with age.…”