Time-Inconsistent Preferences and Consumer Self-Control

Time-Inconsistent Preferences and Excessive Smoking - Cigarette Taxation as a Self-Control Device

Nonparametric Analysis of Time-Inconsistent Preferences

This paper provides a revealed preference characterisation of quasi-hyperbolic discounting which is designed to be applied to readily-available expenditure surveys. We describe necessary and sufficient conditions for the leading forms of the model and also explore the consequences the restrictions on preferences popularly used in empirical lifecycle consumption models. Using data from a househo...

Efficiency and equilibrium when preferences are time-inconsistent

We consider an exchange economy with time-inconsistent consumers whose preferences are additively separable. When these consumers trade in a sequence of markets, their time-inconsistency may introduce a non-convexity that gives them an incentive to trade lotteries. If there are many consumers, competitive equilibria with and without lotteries exist. The existence of symmetric equilibria may req...

Time-inconsistent Risk Preferences in a Laboratory Experiment

We conducted an experiment to explore the time-consistency of risk preferences in a multi-period betting game. Specifically, subjects planned their contingent betting decisions in advance then played the game dynamically later to determine whether their respective decisions matched. We found that subjects took more risk than planned in their initial bet and after losses. In addition, this incre...

Strategic Implications of Competing For Consumers with Time Inconsistent Preferences∗

I examine oligopolistic competition for time inconsistent consumers. The two cases of investment (health clubs) and leisure goods (credit cards) have different implications for strategy. For leisure goods the firms offer introductory rates at the fully rational consumer level, but consumers end up paying higher fixed rates later. In the limit, the markups go to zero. For investment goods there ...