In this paper, we analyze the dynamics of a very small economy which tries to attract foreign investments. For that purpose, we model the intertemporal behavior of a small jurisdiction using taxes and attractive public infrastructures as policy instruments, for given policy choices of the rest...

Incorporating weakly nonseparable preferences into the familiar time-preference model, we emphasize a role of steady-state welfare changes in determining the effect of permanent tariffs on the current account. The effect consists of: a welfare effect, due to steady-state welfare changes, which...

This paper argues that, to be forward-looking in a logically consistent sense, a decision maker must take account of his overall well-being, not just his instantaneous utility, in all future periods. However, such a decision-maker is necessarily time inconsistent. The paper explores the...

Hyperbolic discounting with naiveté is widely believed to provide a better explanation than exponential discounting of why people borrow so much and why they wait so long to save for retirement. We reach a different set of conclusions. We show that if financial planning is enriched to include...

We consider a neoclassical growth model with quasi-hyperbolic discounting under Kantian optimization: each temporal self acts in a way that they would like every future self to act. We introduce the notion of a Kantian policy as an outcome of Kantian optimization in a given class of policies. We...

Households regularly fail to make optimal financial decisions. But what are the underlying reasons for this? Using two conceptually distinct measures of time inconsistency based on bank account transaction data and behavioral measurement experiments, we show that the excessive use of bank...