After 2008, eradication efforts, as well as a cash incentive program for provinces that eradicated all opium poppy crops, helped reduce cultivation drastically through 2010.
City officials said that they did not know of another such cash incentive program in the United States, but that the approach has had success in Mexico and has been used in several other countries.
Mr. Rodriguez, of Rewarding Achievement, said the cash incentive program would be tweaked for next year, and that the rewards for 4's and 3's would most likely be lowered to $500 and $250 (scores of 5 will still net $1,000).
"I'm just dumbfounded that they can regard this as an achievement or as a great improvement or as something worth spending the money on," said Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, who had expressed cautious support for the cash incentive program when it was announced last fall.
The company is offering a cash incentive program for new accounts.
While cash-incentive programs are expanding rapidly in schools nationwide — most of them financed by philanthropists — measurable evidence of their effectiveness is scarce.
A better strategy, Barker and Anwyl agreed, would be a cash-incentive program to encourage consumers to replace their older, gas-guzzling vehicles with newer, fuel efficient cars.
The Obama administration's car incentive program, cash for clunkers, was the fastest-rising search term in the third quarter of the year -- just after the Department of Transportation told dealers to stop offering the rebate.
In keeping with the multiplicity theme, more than $100 million is reported to be at stake on the project, which has been shooting in Europe with a bundle of cash from German incentive programs.
Economists said that the slower growth at the end of the year was partly the result of the expiration of cash-for-clunkers incentive programs in Germany and in other countries, which had been driving sales of Volkswagens and other cars.
