Manfield Park, or Fanny's Temptation

Temptation 1

This survey discusses decision–theoretic models of agents who seek to constrain and regulate their own future behavior. The common theme is that the decision makers’ future utility is affected by unwanted temptations. The wish to eliminate temptations from future option sets creates a preference for commitment. The surveyed models explore the relationship between temptations and other psycholog...

Temptation and Self-Control†

In a two period decision problem, we study individuals who, in the second period, may be tempted by ex ante inferior choices. Individuals have preferences over sets of alternatives that represent the feasible choices in the second period. Our axioms yield a representation that identifies the individual’s commitment ranking, her temptation ranking, and her cost of selfcontrol. We provide an axio...

The Value of Temptation

There is an implicit assumption in electronic commerce that induces the buyers to believe that their deals will be handled appropriately. However, after a seller has already committed to a buyer, he may be tempted by several requests though he will not be able to supply them all. We analyze markets in which a finite set of automated buyers interacts repeatedly with a finite set of automated sel...

Option Exercise with Temptation∗

This paper analyzes an agent’s option exercise decision under uncertainty. The agent decides whether and when to do an irreversible activity. He is tempted by immediate gratification and suffers from self-control problems. This paper adopts the Gul and Pensendorfer selfcontrol utility model. Unlike the time inconsistent hyperbolic discounting model, it provides an explanation of procrastination...

To “ Temptation and Taxation ” (