Perverse incentives are incentives that have unintended and undesirable results that are contrary to the intentions of their designers. Perverse incentives are a type of negative unintended consequence. A classic example of a perverse incentive occurred when the British government offered a bounty for dead cobras with the intent of decreasing the wild cobra population. However, enterprising people began to breed cobras for income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped, causing the cobra breeders to set the now-worthless snakes free. As a result, the wild cobra population further increased. The term “cobra effect” was coined to describe a situation where an attempted solution to a problem actually makes the problem worse. (Wikipedia)
I’ll be writing about them.
—Sally Thurer
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