Impulsivity is a stable personality trait associated with myopic choice behavior that favors immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards and is often characterized as maladaptive inside and outside of the laboratory. An alternative view suggests that the consequences of trait impulsivity depend on the nature of the task environment. On this view, the optimal level of impulsivity varies acros...

In a tournament, a principal sets a prize, and several agents then compete to attain the highest observed output, and win the prize. This paper departs from the existing literature on tournaments by assuming that agents can influence the spread of their distribution of output, in addition to the mean. We ask in which way risk taking and effort interacts in equilibrium. First, under standard tou...

Both real and hypothetical monetary rewards are widely used as reinforcers in risk taking and decision making studies. However, whether real and hypothetical monetary rewards modulate risk taking and decision making in the same manner remains controversial. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERP) with a balloon analogue risk task (BART) paradigm to examine the effects of real and ...

Self-administered rewards are ubiquitous. They serve as incentives for personal accomplishments and are widely recommended to increase personal motivation. We show that in a model with time-inconsistent and reference-dependent preferences, self-rewards can be a credible and effective tool to overcome self-control problems. We also discuss the different types of self-rewards the individual can u...