To anyone who ever knew him, including fellow prisoners, John List comes across as a kindly and gentle man. Deeply religious he never missed church, never swore and never had a woman until just before marriage. But there was something wrong with him. He couldn't recall anything about the 41 days of combat he experienced in Germany as an infantryman in World War II. He couldn't seem to hold a job for long and he had trouble dealing with the problems of his teenaged kids. Then in 1971, seemingly out of the blue, List murdered his mother, wife and three children in cold blood, and fled to...

To anyone who ever knew him, including fellow prisoners, John List comes across as a kindly and gentle man. Deeply religious he never missed church, never swore and never had a woman until just before marriage. But there was something wrong with him. He couldn't recall anything about the 41 days of combat he experienced in Germany as an infantryman in World War II. He couldn't seem to hold a job for long and he had trouble dealing with the problems of his teenaged kids. Then in 1971, seemingly out of the blue, List murdered his mother, wife and three children in cold blood, and fled to...

Can economics be passionate?... Can it center on people and what really matters to them day-in and day-out.... And help us understand their hidden motives for why they do what they do in everyday life?

Uri Gneezy and John List are revolutionaries. Their ideas and methods for revealing what really works in addressing big social, business, and economic problems gives us new understanding of the motives underlying human behavior. We can then structure incentives that can get people to move mountains, change their behavior--or at least get a better deal.

But finding the right incentive...