A measurement of Decreasing Impatience for Health and Money

Han Bleichrodt; Yu Gao; Kirsten I.M. Rohde

doi:10.1007/s11166-016-9240-0

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 journal › Article › Academic › peer-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 language	English
Pages (from-to)	213-231
Number of pages	19
Journal	Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
Volume	52
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-016-9240-0
Publication status	Published - 1 Jun 2016
Externally published	Yes

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title = "A measurement of Decreasing Impatience for Health and Money",

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{\textendash}597, 1992) and proportional discounting (Mazur, Quantitative Analyses of Behavior, 5, 55{\textendash}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.",

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AB - 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.

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A measurement of Decreasing Impatience for Health and Money

Abstract

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