It reminds me of the possibly apocryphal story of a daycare that got tired of parents picking their kids up late. They decided to start charging a fee every time a parent was late to pick up. Once they did, parents were actually more likely to pick their kids up late. Presumably because they figured they were paying for the privilege.
My kids’ old preschool must have read Freakonomics and instead charged $5/min. My wife once fell asleep and was charged $90 for being 18 min late (I got a call at 6). At least it wasn’t $5/min/kid (2 kids).
Mostly, if parents were running late, they’d ask another parent to check out their kid and watch them for a few.
I was making a dumb comment about the use of the word apocryphal. I thought I was clever last night.
I’ve read about the daycare fines before and didn’t have reason to doubt it any more or less than other anecdotes I’ve read. The paper you linked seems like pretty good evidence that it actually happened — assuming the rest of the paper supports the abstract.
