We consider discounted-utility models with a reference stream of outcomes. We provide a common framework for the main empirically supported discount functions in terms of three underlying functions: The delay, speedup and generating functions. Each of the delay and speedup functions can be...

To accurately predict behavior economists need reliable measures of individual time preferences and attitudes toward risk and typically need to assume stability of these characteristics over time and across decision domains. We test the reliability of two choice tasks for eliciting discount...

We analyze the relation between time preferences, study effort, and academic performance among first-year business and economics students. Time preferences are measured by stated preferences for an immediate payment over larger delayed payments. Data on study efforts are derived from an...

We explore the individual and joint explanatory power of concepts from economics, psychology, and criminology for criminal behavior. More precisely, we consider risk and time preferences, personality traits from psychology (Big Five and locus of control), and a self-control scale from...

Recent developments in economic theory model intertemporal choice decisions as problems of restraining one's natural impulse to consume today. We use interventions that have been shown in the psychology literature to affect impulse control to examine whether this is indeed the case for...

We study the role of heuristic versus deliberative processing in intertemporal choice. Using studies in the Democratic Republic of Congo and an online labor market, we show that waiting periods –designed to prompt deliberation by temporally separating news about choice sets from choices...

Many important intertemporal decisions, such as investments of firms or households, are made by groups rather than individuals. Little is known what happens to such collective decisions when group members have different incentives for waiting, because the economics literature on group decision...

We introduce DOSE - Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation - and use it to estimate individual-level loss aversion in a representative sample of the U.S. population (N = 2,000). DOSE elicitations are more accurate, more stable across time, and faster to administer than standard...

We study risk attitudes, ambiguity attitudes, and time preferences of 661 children and adolescents, aged ten to eighteen years, in an incentivized experiment and relate experimental choices to field behavior. Experimental measures of impatience are found to be significant predictors of...

We use novel data on nearly 6,000 children and adolescents aged 6 to 16 that combine incen-tivized measures of social, time, and risk preferences with rich information on child behavior and family environment to study whether children's economic preferences predict their behavior. Re-sults from...