In this paper we develop a theoretical model concerning self-control, motivation and commitment. The model, based on …, inferior and has to exercise self-control to resist temptation. A random, time-variant degree of motivation is introduced to … influence his cost of self-control. We introduce an investment-payoff combination as a commitment device that can help the agent …

-leisure self-control problem. We externally induce the goal bracket - daily goals or a weekly goal - and within that bracket let … externally enforced commitment that requires subjects to spend less than a minute each day on the task to get started working …

We study goal setting using a randomized field experiment involving 1092 first-year undergraduate students. Students … a course-specific grade goal during one of the mentor-student meetings (goal treatment). A random subset of those … find that students in the goal treatment perform significantly better as compared to students in the control group, and …