According to Chen's (2013) linguistic-savings hypothesis, languages which grammatically separate the future and the present (like English or Italian) induce less future-oriented behavior than languages in which speakers can refer to the future by using present tense (like German). We complement...

Models of labor supply derived from stochastic utility representations and discretized sets of feasible hours of work have gained popularity because they are more practical than the standard approaches based on marginal calculus. In this paper we argue that practicality is not the only feature...

The standard model of intertemporal choice assumes risk neutrality toward the length of life: due to additivity, agents are not sensitive to a mean preserving spread in the length of life. Using a survey fielded in the RAND American Life Panel (ALP), this paper provides empirical evidence on...

We study the impact of financial education on intertemporal choice in adolescence. The program was randomly assigned among high-school students and intertemporal choices were measured using an incentivized experiment. Students who participated in the program display a decrease in time...

The extent to which individuals discount the future and whether they discount in a time-consistent fashion is an important determinant of their life outcomes. Using a field experiment in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we show that direct exposure to violence substantially increases present...

The paper reexamines the welfare economics of intergenerational risk. Risk and its resolution over time are modeled as a decision tree: in each period, the consumption of the current one-period living generation is to be traded-off against uncertain benefits of future generations; as time...

We show that team formation can serve as an implicit commitment device to overcome problems of self-control. In a situation where individuals have present-biased preferences, any effort that is costly today but rewarded at some later point in time is too low from the perspective of an...

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...

This paper provides the proofs to the analysis of a continuous time matching model with saving in Bayer and Wälde (2010a). The paper proves the results on consumption growth, provides an existence proof for optimal consumption and a detailed derivation of the Fokker-Planck equations

We analyse optimal saving of risk-averse households when labour income stochastically jumps between two states. The generalized Keynes-Ramsey rule includes a precautionary savings term. A phase diagram analysis illustrates consumption and wealth dynamics within and between states. There is an...