Categories
Labor Principles

Pizza Party as an Incentive

Each year the store participates in a competition that divides the employees between two teams to see which team can sell the most during the day. Glenn announces that the winning team will receive a pizza party. While the employees aren’t overly happy about either the competition or the pizza party, incentives can usually be a way to induce higher levels of productivity. It turns out that each team member on the winning team also receives $100, but Glenn was saving it as a surprise incentive. Amy has to explain to Glenn that incentives need to be announced at the beginning in order for them to actually work.

Categories
Labor Statistics Supply & Demand

Winning the Lottery

What would you do if you won the lottery? This clip fits nicely with two different sections of an economics course. The first is how people respond to income increases in terms of purchasing normal goods or luxury goods. For labor economics, this discussion is a good segue to discussion how increases in income decrease the time people devote to work assuming leisure is a normal good.