Present Bias and Collective Dynamic Choice in the Lab

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jackson, Matthew O.; Yariv, Leeat
• 署名单位: Stanford University; The Santa Fe Institute; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR); California Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.12.4184
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 4184-4204
• 关键词: time preference; discount; BEHAVIOR; utility; brain

摘要

We study collective decisions by time-discounting individuals choosing a common consumption stream. We show that with any heterogeneity in time preferences, utilitarian aggregation necessitates a present bias. In lab experiments three quarters of social planners exhibited present biases, and less than two percent were time consistent. Roughly a third of subjects acted as if they were pure utilitarians, and the rest chose as if they also had varying degrees of distributional concerns.