Estimating Time Preferences from Convex Budgets

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Andreoni, James; Sprenger, Charles
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California San Diego; Stanford University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.102.7.3333
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 3333-3356
• 关键词: individual discount rates; risk-aversion; certainty; utility; consumption; BEHAVIOR; uncertainty; IMMEDIACY; CHOICE; delay

摘要

Experimentally elicited discount rates ore frequently higher than what seems reasonable for economic decision-making. Such high rates are often attributed to present-biased discounting. A well-known bias of standard measurements is the assumption of linear consumption utility Attempting to correct this bias using measures of risk aversion to identify concavity, researchers find reasonable discounting but at the cost of exceptionally high utility function curvature. We present a new methodology for identifying time preferences, both discounting and curvature, from simple allocation decisions. We find reasonable levels of both discounting and curvature and, surprisingly, dynamically consistent time preferences.