This paper studies the relevance of cognitive uncertainty - subjective uncertainty over one’s utility-maximizing action - for understanding and predicting intertemporal choice. The main idea is that when people are cognitively noisy, such as when a decision is complex, they implicitly treat...

This paper studies the relevance of cognitive uncertainty - subjective uncertainty over one's utility-maximizing action - for understanding and predicting intertemporal choice. The main idea is that when people are cognitively noisy, such as when a decision is complex, they implicitly treat...

This paper introduces a formal definition and an experimental measurement of the concept of cognitive uncertainty: people's subjective uncertainty about what the optimal action is. This concept allows us to bring together and partially explain a set of behavioral anomalies identified across four...

We provide experimental evidence that core intertemporal choice anomalies - including extreme short-run impatience, structural estimates of present bias, hyperbolicity and transitivity violations - are driven by complexity rather than time or risk preferences. First, all anomalies also arise in...

We provide experimental evidence that core intertemporal choice anomalies -- including extreme short-run impatience, structural estimates of present bias, hyperbolicity and transitivity violations -- are driven by complexity rather than time or risk preferences. First, all anomalies also arise...

A large literature shows that people discount financial rewards hyperbolically instead of exponentially. While discounting of money has been questioned as a measure of time preferences, it continues to be highly relevant in empirical practice and predicts a wide range of real-world behaviors,...

This paper introduces a formal definition and an experimental measurement of the concept of cognitive uncertainty: people's subjective uncertainty about what the optimal action is. This concept allows us to bring together and partially explain a set of behavioral anomalies identified across four...