Mood-driven choices and self-regulation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mihm, Maximilian; Ozbek, Kemal
• 署名单位: New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi; University of St Andrews
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.05.006
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 727-760
• 关键词: Choice anomalies; Consumption-saving; Desire for commitment; Internal conflict; Random Strotz; self-regulation

摘要

We model a decision maker who can exert costly effort to regulate herself, thereby reducing internal conflicts between her normative objectives and mood-driven choices. We provide an axiomatic characterization of the model, and show how costs of self-regulation can be elicited and compared across individuals. In a consumption-saving problem we show that self-regulation can generate unintended income effects, which have important implications for public policies on saving behavior. We also provide several examples to illustrate how self-regulation can rationalize many well-known choice anomalies. These behavioral implications follow from a key feature of the model that self-regulation decisions can respond to changes in incentives. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.