Decreasing Impatience

Christopher P. Chambers, Federico Echenique, Alan D. Miller

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We characterize decreasing impatience, a common behavioral phenomenon in intertemporal choice. Discount factors that display decreasing impatience are characterized through a convexity axiom for investments at fixed interest rates. Then we show that they are equivalent to a geometric average of generalized quasi-hyperbolic discount rates. Finally, they emerge through parimutuel preference aggregation of exponential discount factors.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)527-551
Number of pages25
JournalAmerican Economic Journal: Microeconomics
Volume15
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
* Chambers: Department of Economics, Georgetown University (email: christopher.chambers@georgetown. edu); Echenique: Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley (email: fede@econ.berkeley.edu); Miller: Faculty of Law, Western University (email: alan.miller@uwo.ca). Leslie Marx was coeditor for this article. Echenique thanks the National Science Foundation for financial support (grants SES-1558757 and CNS-518941). This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs program. We are grateful to Chris Shannon and four anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions.

Publisher Copyright:
© (2023). All Rights Reserved.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics, Econometrics and Finance (all)

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