I’ve written before about making some kind of financial commitment in an effort to fight weak will. Thomas Schelling would approve, I am sure.
But now lawyer-author-economist Ian Ayres (his new book, "Supercrunchers", is great fun) is setting up a company to supervise commitment bonds: you make a contract with them that you’ll lose weight / give up smoking / do something else. You deposit the cash with them. If you don’t fulfill your resolution, you lose.
I couldn’t pass up the chance to be the first customer. $1000 is now riding – $100 per week, a week at a time – on my ability to do a weekly quota of push-ups and sit-ups. (I’ve got to be buff for the book tour in January.)
I shall write a column in December or January about the glowing success of this economic incentive – I hope.
I was going to keep quiet about this, but Greg Mankiw, The Economist, Bryan Caplan and the Washington Post are all on the case. But will any of them have pecs of steel by Christmas Day?
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