BACKGROUND In cost-effectiveness analysis, discount rates are used in calculating the value of future costs and benefits. However, standard discount rates may not accurately describe the decision-making of patients with ulcerative colitis (UC). These patients often choose the long-term risks of immunosuppressive therapy over the short-term risks of colectomy, demonstrating very high discount ra...

In this paper, I examine how time-varying discount factors can contribute to labor market volatility in a Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides matching model. I find that the procyclical discount factor of either entrepreneurs or workers can magnify labor market volatility. Quantitatively, the entrepreneur’s discount factor has a larger effect than the worker’s discount factor. To account for the obser...

We investigate an automobile supply chain where a manufacturer and a retailer serve heterogeneous consumers with electric vehicles (EVs) under a government’s price-discount incentive scheme that involves a price discount rate and a subsidy ceiling. We show that the subsidy ceiling is more effective in influencing the optimal wholesale pricing decision of the manufacturer with a higher unit prod...

We estimate discount rates of 555 subjects using a laboratory task and find that these individual discount rates predict inter-individual variation in field behaviors (e.g., exercise, BMI, smoking). The correlation between the discount rate and each field behavior is small: none exceeds 0.28 and many are near 0. However, the discount rate has at least as much predictive power as any variable in...

A mathematical formalism is developed for the existence of unique invariants associated with wide classes of observed discounting behavior. These invariants are ‘exponential discount rate spectra,’ derived from the theory of completely monotone functions. Exponential discounting, the empirically important case of hyperbolic discounting, and so-called sub-additive discounting are each special ca...

Although two classes of shares on the same Chinese companies differ only in that the A-share class trade in Yuan and the B-share class in dollars, the B-shares have traded at a significant and persistent discounts to the A-shares since inception of the B-share market in the early 1990s. The persistence of the discount has been a puzzle. We find that liquidity differences between the less liquid...

We consider a problem faced by a procurement manager who needs to purchase a large volume of multiple items over multiple periods from multiple suppliers that provide base prices and discounts. Discounts are contingent on meeting various conditions on total volume or spend, and some are tied to future realizations of random events that can be mutually verified. We formulate a scenario-based mul...