Carrot and stick (also "carrot or stick")[1] is an idiom that refers to a policy of offering a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior. It may derive from methods used for training mules and other animals by drawing them foward with rewards (the "carrot") and driving them foward with punishment (the "stick")
The earliest citation of this expression recorded by the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary is to The Economist magazine in the December 11, 1948, issue. The Economist decries a specific failure of the method, metaphorically trying to induce a donkey to move by alternately rewarding it with carrots and punishing it with a switch, the original meaning of the phrase.
The term is occasionally mistaken for the figure of a carrot on a stick. In this case, the driver would tie a carrot on a string to a long stick and dangle it in front of the donkey, just out of its reach. As the donkey moved forward to get the carrot, it pulled the cart and the driver so that the carrot would always remain out of reach.
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