IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/17888.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Identification of Time-Inconsistent Models: The Case of Insecticide Treated Nets

Author

Listed:
  • Tarozzi, Alessandro
  • Mahajan, Aprajit
  • Michel, Christian

Abstract

Time-inconsistency may play a central role in explaining inter-temporal behavior, particularly among poor households. However, little is known about the distribution of time-inconsistent agents, and time-preference parameters are typically not identified in standard dynamic choice models. We formulate a dynamic discrete choice model in an unobservedly heterogeneous population of possibly time-inconsistent agents. We provide conditions under which all population type probabilities and preferences for both time-consistent and sophisticated agents are point-identified and sharp set-identification results for \naive and partially sophisticated agents. Estimating the model using data from a health intervention providing insecticide treated nets (ITNs) in rural Orissa, India, we find that a little over two-thirds of our sample comprises time-inconsistent agents and that both sophisticated and naiive agents are considerably present-biased. Counterfactuals show that the under-investment in ITNs attributable to present-bias leads to substantial costs that are about five times the price of an ITN.

Suggested Citation

  • Tarozzi, Alessandro & Mahajan, Aprajit & Michel, Christian, 2023. "Identification of Time-Inconsistent Models: The Case of Insecticide Treated Nets," CEPR Discussion Papers 17888, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17888
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP17888
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Time inconsistency; Partial identification; Mixture model; Expectations; Bednets; Dynamic discrete choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17888. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.