======================= HES POSTING ================= A colleague has an interesting question to which I thought this newsgroup might be able to respond: Can anyone help me find out about the origin and development of the current use of the term "incentive?" It is used now as a noun roughly synonymous with "inducement" and generally in a context where the incentive is thought to play a part in a person's rational calculation of the course of action best suited to advance his interests. It used to be used primarily as an adjective to describe something which aroused strong feelings (the OED gives "Lord Shaftesbury made an incentive speech in the House of Lords" as an example) - or when used as a noun, it meant an incitement or provocation. That is - the word used to carry connotations associated with especially passionate and irrational motivations to action. I am interested in (1)when "incentive" became a common term in economic discourse in particular and (2)the shift in association from the passions to rationality; or perhaps more accurately, the end of the importance of the distinction between appeals to rationality and appeals to the passions (contemporary conceptions of "incentives" and "preferences" etc. tend to collapse that distinction). ... any clues??? Please reply to [log in to unmask] Craufurd D. Goodwin Department of Economics, Duke University E-mail: [log in to unmask] ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]