Doing It Now or Later

Ted O’Donoghue; M. Rabin

DOI:10.1257/AER.89.1.103

Corpus ID: 5115877

Doing It Now or Later

@article{ODonoghue1999DoingIN,
  title={Doing It Now or Later},
  author={Ted O’Donoghue and M. Rabin},
  journal={The American Economic Review},
  year={1999},
  volume={89},
  pages={103-124}
}

Ted O’Donoghue, M. Rabin

Published 1999

Economics

The American Economic Review

Though economists assume that intertemporal preferences are time-consistent, evidence suggests that a person's relative preference for well-being at an earlier moment over a later moment increases as the earlier moment gets closer. We explore the beh avioral and welfare implications of such time-inconsistent preferences in a simple model where a person must engage in an activity exactly once during some duration. We focus on two sets of distinctions. First, do choices involve salient costs… CONTINUE READING

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