This paper develops an axiomatic construction of preferences that allows to compare lotteries involving lives of different lengths. Our axioms which basically formalize two assumptions - individuals are rational and have stationary preferences - leads to a class of utility functions that is much...

This papers provides an explanation for time preference: we show that in the case of uncertain lifetime, future consumption should be weighted not only according to survival probability, but also according to a discount factor due to risk aversion with respect to the length of life. When...

Intertemporal correlation aversion is an intuitive concept indicating whether an individual prefers lotteries concerning consumption at different moments in time to be positively or negatively correlated. I show that the difference between the coefficient of relative risk aversion and the...

I compare two different ways of integrating mortality into life-cycle models: the standard additive model with time preferences, on the one hand, and a formulation that rules out the existence of time preference, but allows for risk aversion with respect to the length of life, on the other hand....

This paper makes explicit the links between preferences over lotteries on length of life and intertemporal choice. I show that the approach used by traditional life cycle models to account for uncertain survival corresponds to a strong assumption of risk neutrality with respect to the length of...