Incentives for Moral Behavior

A friend recommended that I read the book, Freakonomics (Levitt and Dubner 2005). I began reading it last night and was intensely impressed with the authors' ideas (but not unifying themes!) and arguments. Most of all, I was intrigued by a particular study referenced in the book that suggests a negative synergy between moral behavior and economic values. I performed further research on the referenced experiment above and extracted the following information: In this study, a small fine (~$3/day/child) was imposed on six daycare centers in Israel that were struggling with late pickups by the parents of the children. Surprisingly, after the placement of this new regulation, late pickups increased, even by parents who did not have a previous history of late pickups. This data suggests that there is a negative correlation between moral behavior (courtesy and consideration for the teachers) and economic value (fee for a late pickup). It appears that once a fee was instituted, parents began to put a price tag on their inability to pick up their children (Gneezy et al. 2000). This concept fascinats me! Does this suggest that the incentive for moral behavior is indeed stronger and more convincing than economic motives? Or does this hypothesis only hold true so long as the economic value is less than the moral value? The latter concept seems rational: what else would explain the corruption and greed that surrounds those hungry for power and wealth? Clearly, there must be a group who is willing to break some moral rules in an effort to complete its own agenda, but how far would they be willing to go? What determines their "threshold" per se? And what about the rest of us common folk? Are we, in fact, more morally bound than we think we are? Is it possible that we are, perhaps unintentionally, behaving according to a specific set of moral standards?