IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucr/wpaper/201425.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Virtues of Hesitation

Author

Listed:
  • Urmee Khan

    (Department of Economics, University of California Riverside)

  • Maxwell Stinchcombe

    (University of Texas, Austin)

Abstract

. In many economic, political and social situations, circumstances change at random points in time, reacting is costly, and reactions appropri- ate to present circumstances may become inappropriate upon future changes, requiring further costly reaction. Waiting is informative if arrival of the next change has non-constant hazard rate. We identify two classes of situations: in the first, delayed reaction is optimal only when the hazard rate of further changes is decreasing; in the second, it is optimal only when the hazard rate of further changes is increasing. These results in semi-Markovian decision theory provide motivations for building delay into decision systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Urmee Khan & Maxwell Stinchcombe, 2012. "The Virtues of Hesitation," Working Papers 201425, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics, revised Sep 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucr:wpaper:201425
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.ucr.edu/repec/ucr/wpaper/201425.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://economics.ucr.edu/repec/ucr/wpaper/201425R.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hall, Darwin C. & Behl, Richard J., 2006. "Integrating economic analysis and the science of climate instability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 442-465, May.
    2. Barry Eichengreen, 2010. "The Breakup of the Euro Area," NBER Chapters, in: Europe and the Euro, pages 11-51, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Peter Diamond, 2011. "Unemployment, Vacancies, Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1045-1072, June.
    4. Dale T. Mortensen, 2011. "Markets with Search Friction and the DMP Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1073-1091, June.
    5. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801.
    6. Pradeep K. Chintagunta, 1998. "Inertia and Variety Seeking in a Model of Brand-Purchase Timing," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(3), pages 253-270.
    7. Simon, Leo K & Stinchcombe, Maxwell B, 1989. "Extensive Form Games in Continuous Time: Pure Strategies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(5), pages 1171-1214, September.
    8. Füsun F. Gönül & Frenkel Ter Hofstede, 2006. "How to Compute Optimal Catalog Mailing Decisions," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(1), pages 65-74, 01-02.
    9. Ortego-Marti, Victor, 2016. "Unemployment history and frictional wage dispersion," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 5-22.
    10. Rose, Andrew, 2007. "Checking out: exits from currency unions," Journal of Financial Transformation, Capco Institute, vol. 19, pages 121-128.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Svetlana Boyarchenko, 2020. "Super- and submodularity of stopping games with random observations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(4), pages 983-1022, November.
    2. Sander Heinsalu, 2020. "Infection arbitrage," Papers 2004.08701, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.

    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. Norman, Catherine S. & DECANIO, STEPHEN J & Fan, Lin, 2007. "Opportunities and Challenges for the 20th Anniversary of the Montréal Protocol," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt3t90g0gr, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    2. Hiroshi Yoshikawa, 2015. "Stochastic macro-equilibrium: a microfoundation for the Keynesian economics," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 10(1), pages 31-55, April.
    3. Escudé, Matteo & Sinander, Ludvig, 2023. "Slow persuasion," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 18(1), January.
      • Matteo Escud'e & Ludvig Sinander, 2019. "Slow persuasion," Papers 1903.09055, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    4. Yamamoto, Shugo, 2013. "Sudden stop and trade balance reversal after Asian crisis: Investment drought impact versus exchange rate depreciation," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 750-765.
    5. S. Scrieciu & Zaid Chalabi, 2014. "Climate policy planning and development impact assessment," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 255-260, March.
    6. DeCanio, Stephen J., 2009. "The political economy of global carbon emissions reductions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 915-924, January.
    7. Danthine, Samuel & De Vroey, Michel, 2017. "The Integration Of Search In Macroeconomics: Two Alternative Paths," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 523-548, December.
    8. Gowdy, John M., 2008. "Behavioral economics and climate change policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(3-4), pages 632-644, December.
    9. Karsten Hansen & Vishal Singh, 2009. "Market Structure Across Retail Formats," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 656-673, 07-08.
    10. Tholl, Johannes & Schwarzbach, Christoph & Pittalis, Sandro & von Mettenheim, Hans-Jörg, 2020. "Bank funding and the recent political development in Italy: What about redenomination risk?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    11. Hideaki Aoyama & Hiroshi Iyetomi & Hiroshi Yoshikawa, 2015. "Equilibrium distribution of labor productivity: a theoretical model," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 10(1), pages 57-66, April.
    12. Fields, Gary S., 2011. "Labor market analysis for developing countries," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 16-22.
    13. Matthew Groh & David McKenzie & Nour Shammout & Tara Vishwanath, 2015. "Testing the importance of search frictions and matching through a randomized experiment in Jordan," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-20, December.
    14. AOYAMA Hideaki & IYETOMI Hiroshi & YOSHIKAWA Hiroshi, 2012. "Equilibrium Distribution of Labor Productivity," Discussion papers 12041, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    15. Ioannides, Yannis M., 2018. "A DMP model of intercity trade," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 97-111.
    16. Hideaki Aoyama & Hiroshi Iyetomi & Hiroshi Yoshikawa, 2012. "Equilibrium Distribution of Labor Productivity: A Theoretical Model," Papers 1205.2470, arXiv.org.
    17. Derek Lemoine & Christian Traeger, 2014. "Watch Your Step: Optimal Policy in a Tipping Climate," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 137-166, February.
    18. Stéphane Hallegatte, 2008. "A Proposal for a New Prescriptive Discounting Scheme: The Intergenerational Discount Rate," Working Papers 2008.47, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    19. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    20. Strand, Jon, 2011. "Carbon offsets with endogenous environmental policy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 371-378, March.

    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:ucr:wpaper:201425. 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: Kelvin Mac (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deucrus.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.