The Cobra Bounty

ISBN-13: 9783565206971 / Angielski / Miękka / 108 str.

Nikhil Scale

Opis

"The Cobra Bounty - How paying for dead snakes created more snakes" is the definitive book on the "Cobra Effect." The story is legendary: The British colonial government in Delhi was worried about the number of venomous cobras. To solve the problem, they offered a cash bounty for every dead cobra skin brought in. Initially, the snake population dropped.Economist Nikhil Scale explains the twist: Entrepreneurial locals began breeding cobras in their homes just to kill them and collect the money. When the government realized this and canceled the program, the breeders released their now-worthless snakes into the wild, tripling the original population."The Cobra Bounty" explores how well-intentioned policies often backfire due to perverse incentives. It applies this logic to modern examples, from paying teachers for test scores (cheating) to paying for trash collection (illegal dumping). A masterclass in second-order thinking.

The classic story of how the British tried to reduce the snake population in India but accidentally paid people to breed them.