Identifying Present Bias from the Timing of Choices

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Heidhues, Paul; Strack, Philipp
• 署名单位: Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf; Yale University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20191258
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 2594-2622
• 关键词: Procrastination; deadlines; MODEL

摘要

A (partially naive) quasi-hyperbolic discounter repeatedly chooses whether to complete a task. Her net benefits of task completion are drawn independently between periods from a time-invariant distribution. We show that the probability of completing the task conditional on not having done so earlier increases towards the deadline. Conversely, we establish nonidentifiability by proving that for any time-preference parameters and any dataset with such (weakly increasing) task-completion probabilities, there exists a stationary payoff distribution that rationalizes the agent's behavior if she is either sophisticated or fully naive. Additionally, we provide sharp partial identification for the case of observable continuation values.