Monetary policy

The thirty-third entry is l’incitation à la prise de risque, and the noun that opens it is one English long ago cut in two. Une incitation is anything that moves a person to act, and it says nothing about whether the act is welcome. It covers the economist’s sense exactly, since une incitation fiscale is a tax break meant to make firms invest and cheap money creates une incitation à la prise de risque; and it covers the criminal sense just as exactly, since l’incitation à la haine raciale is an offence with a penalty attached. English refuses to let one noun hold both. « An incentive » is the economic one, dry and approving, what a scheme is designed to produce. « Incitement » is the legal one, and it points only at wrongdoing — incitement to violence, to hatred, to riot. Nobody writes « an incitement to invest », and no prosecutor charges « an incentive to violence ». So this entry is an incentive and never an incitement. The verb behaves the same way: inciter quelqu’un à investir is usually « encourage », because « incite » in English arrives already carrying the charge sheet.