Though economists assume that intertemporal preferences are time-consistent, evidence suggests that a person's relative preference for well-being at an earlier moment over a later moment increases as the earlier moment gets closer. We explore the beh avioral and welfare implications of such time-inconsistent preferences in a simple model where a person must engage in an activity exactly once during some duration. We focus on two sets of distinctions. First, do choices involve salient costs - where t he costs of an action are immediate but any rewards are delayed - or do they involve salient rewards - where the rewards of an action are immediate but any costs are delayed? Second, are people sophisticated - they foresee future self-control problems - o r are the na‹ve - they do not anticipate these self-control problems? Na‹ve people procrastinate activities with salient costs and preproperate - do too soon - activities with salient rewards. If costs are salient, sophistication mitigates procrastinati on, and can even lead sophisticated people to do the activity sooner than if they had no self-control problem. If rewards are salient, sophistication exacerbates preproperation. These behavioral results have corresponding welfare implications: With sali ent costs, mild self-control problems can severely damage a person only if she is na‹ve, while with salient rewards mild self-control problems can severely damage a person only is she is sophisticated. We also consider a multiple-activity version of the model and discuss how our results might apply to savings, addiction, and other behaviors.
Download Info
To our knowledge, this item is not available for
download. To find whether it is available, there are three
options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page
whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be
available.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of California at Berkeley in its series Economics Working Papers with number
97-253.