How Much Time-Inconsistency Is There and Does It Matter? Evidence on Self-Awareness, Size, and Effects∗

Using students’ predicted and unpredicted delays in midterm preparation as measures of time-inconsistency and self-awareness, this paper shows that time-inconsistent behavior is associated with inferior class performance. Most students showed some time-inconsistency. Most were at least partially aware of their time-inconsistency. Despite full awareness, the sophisticates still under-performed in class relative to the time-consistent. Those naive about future time-inconsistency also under-performed relative to the time-consistent. Robustness checks reveal that consistent with hyperbolic discounting, failure to anticipate preference reversal is related to the students’ empirical discount rates at different time-points. JEL: A22, D91