Delay discounting refers to decision-makers' tendency to value immediately available goods more than identical goods available only after some delay. In violation of standard economic theory, decision-makers frequently exhibit dynamic inconsistency; their preferences change simply due to the passage of time. The standard explanation for this behavior has appealed to the nature of decision-maker...

Hyperbolic discounting of future outcomes is widely observed to underlie choice behavior in animals. Additionally, recent studies (Kobayashi & Schultz, 2008) have reported that hyperbolic discounting is observed even in neural systems underlying choice. However, the most prevalent models of temporal discounting, such as temporal difference learning, assume that future outcomes are discounted ex...

A probability weighting function (w(p)) is considered to be a nonlinear function of probability (p) in behavioral decision theory. This study proposes a psychophysical model of probability weighting functions derived from a hyperbolic time discounting model and a geometric distribution. The aim of the study is to show probability weighting functions from the point of view of waiting time for a ...

Article history: Received 28 January 2008 Available online xxxx JEL classification: C91 D03 D90 In this paper we elicit preferences for money–time pairs via experimental techniques. We estimate a general specification of discounting that nests exponential and hyperbolic discounting, as well as various forms of present bias, including quasi-hyperbolic discounting. We find that discount rates are...

Psychological models of temporal discounting have now successfully displaced classical economic theory due to the simple fact that many common behavior patterns, such as impulsivity, were unexplainable with classic models. However, the now dominant hyperbolic model of discounting is itself becoming increasingly strained. Numerous factors have arisen that alter discount rates with no means to in...

Choices involving tradeo¤s of bene…ts and costs over time are pervasive in our everyday lives. The observation of declining discount rates in experimental settings has led many to promote hyperbolic discounting over standard exponential discounting as the preferred descriptive model of intertemporal choice. In this paper, I develop a new framework that directly models the intertemporal utility ...

Time discounting is the phenomenon that a desired result in the future is perceived as less valuable than the same result now. Economic theories can take this psychological fact into account in several ways. In the economic literature the most widely used type of additive time discounting is exponential discounting. In exponential discounting, the fall of valuation depends by a constant factor ...

Subadditive time discounting means that discounting over a delay is greater when the delay is divided into subintervals than when it is left undivided. This may produce the most important result usually attributed to hyperbolic discounting: declining impatience, or the inverse relationship between the discount rate and the magnitude of the delay. Three choice experiments were conducted to test ...

A mathematical formalism is developed for the existence of unique invariants associated with wide classes of observed discounting behavior. These invariants are ‘exponential discount rate spectra,’ derived from the theory of completely monotone functions. Exponential discounting, the empirically important case of hyperbolic discounting, and so-called sub-additive discounting are each special ca...