A measurement of Decreasing Impatience for Health and Money

Han Bleichrodt*, Yu Gao, Kirsten I.M. Rohde

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This paper measures deviations from constant discounting and compares these deviations for health and money. Our measurements make no assumptions about utility and do not require separability of preferences over time. In an experiment, most subjects were decreasingly impatient, but a substantial minority was increasingly impatient. The deviations from constant discounting were more pronounced for health than for money suggesting that time preferences are domain-specific. Hyperbolic discounting (Loewenstein and Prelec, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 573–597, 1992) and proportional discounting (Mazur, Quantitative Analyses of Behavior, 5, 55–73, 1987) best described time preferences. Quasi-hyperbolic discounting, the most popular model to accommodate deviations from constant discounting, was rejected for both health and money.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)213-231
Number of pages19
JournalJournal of Risk and Uncertainty
Volume52
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Externally publishedYes

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