Eliciting Time Preferences When Income and Consumption Vary: Theory, Validation, and Application to Job Search

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Belot, Michele; Kircher, Philipp; Muller, Paul
• 署名单位: Cornell University; University of Edinburgh; Universite Catholique Louvain; Tinbergen Institute
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20220118
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 130-170
• 关键词: DECISION-MAKING; Discount rates; RISK; disappointment; elicitation; Consistency; ECONOMICS; CHOICE

摘要

We propose a simple method for eliciting individual time preferences without estimating utility functions even in settings where background consumption changes over time. It relies on eliciting preferences for receiving high stakes lottery tickets at different points in time. In a standard intertemporal choice model high rewards decouple lottery choices from variation in background consumption. We investigate robustness to other assumptions theoretically, and validate our elicitation method experimentally. We illustrate an application of our method with unemployed job seekers, which naturally have income/consumption variation. (JEL D12, D15, D91, G51, J22, J64)