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 language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 527-551 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | American Economic Journal: Microeconomics |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
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)