When rationality is bounded, a variety of factors may influence how far a choice is from optimal. We examine the willingness to search among alternatives. We find fixed individual differences in this temperament measure. People may be usefully typed according to how they obtain improved choices. More patient subjects obtain improvement by effectively using decision resources, performing better ...

Women, Children and Patience: Experimental Evidence from Indian Villages In this paper we study the link between women’s responsibility for children and their preferences. We use a large random sample of individuals living in rural India, incentive compatible measures of patience and risk aversion, and detailed survey data. We find more patient choices among women who have a higher number of ch...

Consider the Geo/Geo/1 queue with impatient customers and let X reflect the patience distribution. We show that systems with a smaller patience distribution X in the convex-ordering sense give rise to fewer abandonments (due to impatience), irrespective of whether customers become patient when entering the service facility. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The ability to exercise patience is important for human functioning. Although it is known that patience can be promoted by using top-down control, or willpower, to override impatient impulses, patience is also malleable-in particular, susceptible to framing effects-in ways that are difficult to explain using willpower alone. So far, the mechanisms underlying framing effects on patience have bee...

We consider finite-state concurrent stochastic games, played by k ≥ 2 players for an infinite number of rounds, where in every round, each player simultaneously and independently of the other players chooses an action, whereafter the successor state is determined by a probability distribution given by the current state and the chosen actions. We consider reachability objectives that given a tar...