IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdm/wpaper/2024-03.html

Random Discounted Expected Utility

Author

Listed:
  • Jose Apesteguia
  • Miguel A. Ballester
  • Ángelo Gutiérrez-Daza

Abstract

This paper introduces the random discounted expected utility (RDEU) model, which we have developed as a means to deal with heterogeneous risk and time preferences. The RDEU model provides an explicit linkage between preference and choice heterogeneity. We prove it has solid comparative statics, discuss its identification, and demonstrate its computational convenience. Finally, we use two distinct experimental datasets to illustrate the advantages of the RDEU model over common alternatives for estimating heterogeneity in preferences across individuals.

Suggested Citation

  • Jose Apesteguia & Miguel A. Ballester & Ángelo Gutiérrez-Daza, 2024. "Random Discounted Expected Utility," Working Papers 2024-03, Banco de México.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdm:wpaper:2024-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.banxico.org.mx/publications-and-press/banco-de-mexico-working-papers/%7B8691FF34-8374-C6BF-E547-2597547FA574%7D.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Valentino Dardanoni & Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti & Christopher J. Tyson, 2020. "Inferring Cognitive Heterogeneity From Aggregate Choices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(3), pages 1269-1296, May.
    2. Armin Falk & Anke Becker & Thomas Dohmen & Benjamin Enke & David B. Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2017. "Global Evidence on Economic Preferences," NBER Working Papers 23943, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Jose Apesteguia & Miguel A. Ballester, 2018. "Monotone Stochastic Choice Models: The Case of Risk and Time Preferences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(1), pages 74-106.
    4. Manel Baucells & Franz H. Heukamp, 2012. "Probability and Time Trade-Off," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 831-842, April.
    5. Martin Ahlbrecht & Martin Weber, 1997. "An Empirical Study on Intertemporal Decision Making Under Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(6), pages 813-826, June.
    6. Andersen, Steffen & Harrison, Glenn W. & Lau, Morten I. & Rutström, E. Elisabet, 2014. "Discounting behavior: A reconsideration," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 15-33.
    7. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    8. James Andreoni & Charles Sprenger, 2012. "Estimating Time Preferences from Convex Budgets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3333-3356, December.
    9. Armin Falk & Anke Becker & Thomas Dohmen & Benjamin Enke & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2018. "Global Evidence on Economic Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1645-1692.
    10. Raymond Fisman & Shachar Kariv & Daniel Markovits, 2007. "Individual Preferences for Giving," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1858-1876, December.
    11. Tomomi Tanaka & Colin F. Camerer & Quang Nguyen, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences: Linking Experimental and Household Survey Data from Vietnam," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 557-571, March.
    12. Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & Hong Il Yoo, 2020. "Risk Attitudes, Sample Selection, and Attrition in a Longitudinal Field Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(3), pages 552-568, July.
    13. Keith Coble & Jayson Lusk, 2010. "At the nexus of risk and time preferences: An experimental investigation," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 67-79, August.
    14. Steffen Andersen & Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2008. "Eliciting Risk and Time Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(3), pages 583-618, May.
    15. James Andreoni & Charles Sprenger, 2012. "Risk Preferences Are Not Time Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3357-3376, December.
    16. Leandro S. Carvalho & Stephan Meier & Stephanie W. Wang, 2016. "Poverty and Economic Decision-Making: Evidence from Changes in Financial Resources at Payday," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(2), pages 260-284, February.
    17. Matias D. Cattaneo & Xinwei Ma & Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Elchin Suleymanov, 2020. "A Random Attention Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(7), pages 2796-2836.
    18. Stephen L. Cheung, 2015. "Risk Preferences Are Not Time Preferences: On the Elicitation of Time Preference under Conditions of Risk: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(7), pages 2242-2260, July.
    19. Ned Augenblick & Muriel Niederle & Charles Sprenger, 2015. "Editor's Choice Working over Time: Dynamic Inconsistency in Real Effort Tasks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(3), pages 1067-1115.
    20. Daniel J. Benjamin & Sebastian A. Brown & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2013. "Who Is ‘Behavioral’? Cognitive Ability And Anomalous Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(6), pages 1231-1255, December.
    21. Wilcox, Nathaniel T., 2011. "'Stochastically more risk averse:' A contextual theory of stochastic discrete choice under risk," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 162(1), pages 89-104, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dániel Horn & Hubert János Kiss, 2020. "Time preferences and their life outcome correlates: Evidence from a representative survey," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-26, July.
    2. Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & Hong Il Yoo, 2025. "Constant Discounting, Temporal Instability, And Dynamic Inconsistency In Denmark: A Longitudinal Field Experiment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 66(1), pages 363-392, February.
    3. Uttara Balakrishnan & Johannes Haushofer & Pamela Jakiela, 2020. "How soon is now? Evidence of present bias from convex time budget experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(2), pages 294-321, June.
    4. Chiara Pastore & Stefanie Schurer & Agnieszka Tymula & Nicholas Fuller & Ian Caterson, 2023. "Economic preferences and obesity: Evidence from a clinical lab‐in‐field study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(9), pages 2147-2167, September.
    5. Inukai, Keigo & Shimodaira, Yuta & Shiozawa, Kohei, 2024. "Investigation of the convex time budget experiment by parameter recovery simulation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    6. Holden, Stein T. & Tilahun, Mesfin, 2019. "How related are risk preferences and time preferences?," CLTS Working Papers 4/19, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Centre for Land Tenure Studies, revised 16 Oct 2019.
    7. Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael & Ponti, Giovanni, 2017. "Social motives vs social influence: An experiment on interdependent time preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 177-194.
    8. Zexuan Wang & Ismaël Rafaï & Marc Willinger, 2023. "Does age affect the relation between risk and time preferences? Evidence from a representative sample," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 90(2), pages 341-368, October.
    9. Kureishi, Wataru & Paule-Paludkiewicz, Hannah & Tsujiyama, Hitoshi & Wakabayashi, Midori, 2021. "Time preferences over the life cycle and household saving puzzles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 123-139.
    10. Ubfal, Diego, 2016. "How general are time preferences? Eliciting good-specific discount rates," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 150-170.
    11. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Diego Jorrat & Antonio M. Espín & Angel Sánchez, 2023. "Paid and hypothetical time preferences are the same: lab, field and online evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 412-434, April.
    12. Jin, Miao & Li, Jian & Meng, Juanjuan & Sun, Jingwei, 2025. "Background ambiguity and intertemporal choice: An experimental study on the effect of summer vacation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(PB).
    13. Stefan A. Lipman & Arthur E. Attema, 2024. "A systematic review of unique methods for measuring discount rates," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 69(2), pages 145-189, October.
    14. Andrej Gill & Florian Hett & Johannes Tischer, 2022. "Time Inconsistency and Overdraft Use: Evidence from Transaction Data and Behavioral Measurement Experiments," Working Papers 2205, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    15. Mariam Raheem & Ain ul Momina, 2021. "Do Underlying Risk Preferences explain Individuals’ Cognitive Ability? Evidence from a Sample of Pakistani Students," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 26(1), pages 85-122, Jan-June.
    16. Thomas Epper & Ernst Fehr & Helga Fehr-Duda & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & David Dreyer Lassen & Søren Leth-Petersen & Gregers Nytoft Rasmussen, 2020. "Time Discounting and Wealth Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 1177-1205, April.
    17. Joshua Tasoff & Wenjie Zhang, 2022. "The Performance of Time-Preference and Risk-Preference Measures in Surveys," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1149-1173, February.
    18. Janssens, Wendy & Kramer, Berber & Swart, Lisette, 2017. "Be patient when measuring hyperbolic discounting: Stationarity, time consistency and time invariance in a field experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 77-90.
    19. Ola Andersson & Håkan J. Holm & Jean-Robert Tyran & Erik Wengström, 2020. "Robust inference in risk elicitation tasks," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 195-209, December.
    20. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Miraldo, Marisa & Stavropoulou, Charitini & van der Pol, Marjon, 2016. "Doctor–patient differences in risk and time preferences: A field experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 171-182.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C01 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - Econometrics
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bdm:wpaper:2024-03. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Subgerencia de desarrollo de sistemas (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bangvmx.html .

    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.