Waiting to Choose*

We study the impact of deliberation time on intertemporal choice. Using studies in an online labor market, the laboratory, and a field experiment in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we show that the introduction of waiting periods – designed to prompt deliberation by temporally separating news about choice sets from choices themselves – cause a shift towards substantially more patient decisions. These results cannot be captured by standard models of exponential discounting, nor behavioral models of hyperbolic discounting and present bias. Rather, we demonstrate that our findings are consistent with recent work in economics and psychology that identifies the unique role of deliberation in intertemporal choice. We also compare the effect of a waiting period to that of shifting the intertemporal allocation to the future, which separates and quantifies how these factors affect patience. Our results yield insights on the role of deliberation in decision-making and have implications for policies aimed at reducing myopic choices. JEL Classification: D03, D90, C91, C93