Temptation and Self-Control in Dynamic Choice

动态选择中的诱惑与自我控制

• 批准号: 9911177
• 负责人: Wolfgang Pesendorfer
• 金额: $ 15.99万
• 依托单位: Princeton University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-07-01 至 2005-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9911177&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Temptation; Self; Control; Dynamic; Choice

The choices that individuals make often depend on when they make the decision. Consider a tradeoff between getting a smaller reward in period t and a larger reward in period t+1. In experiments, subjects routinely behave in a dynamically inconsistent fashion when facing such trade-offs: if the decision is made in period t-1 or earlier, the subject opts for the larger, period t+1 reward; by contrast, if the decision is made in period t, the individual opts for the smaller reward that offers immediate consumption instead of choosing to wait until t+1 for the larger reward. Similarly, individuals succumb to tempting but unhealthy consumption more often when the tempting good can be consumed immediately. In this project, which will be undertaken jointly with Faruk Gul of Princeton University, we develop a new choice-theoretic framework to capture this phenomenon. The starting point is a preference relation over sets of alternatives. A set represents a menu of choices for the agent. To capture the idea that agents may be tempted by ex ante undesirable alternatives, we allow preferences to exhibit a desire for commitment, i.e., we allow a strict preference for a smaller set of alternatives. In that framework we identify temptation and self-control as central determinants of behavior. In this work we propose to extend the two-period model that we have already developed to an infinite horizon. The purpose of this extension is to facilitate application of our preferences ("self-control preferences") to a variety of settings, including standard competitive exchange economies. We will explore the implications of self-control preferences for the distribution of income, for the risk premia in stochastic representative agent models, and for the sustainability of debt contracts. In a model of history-dependent preferences, we intend to analyze addiction, a phenomenon closely linked to the lack of self-control. To facilitate comparative statics results, we provide and characterize measures of comparative self-control and comparative preference for commitment.

人们做出的选择往往取决于他们何时做出决定。 考虑在时间段t获得较小的奖励和时间段t+1获得较大的奖励之间的权衡。 在实验中，当面对这样的权衡时，受试者通常会表现出动态不一致的方式：如果在t-1或更早的时间段做出决定，受试者会选择更大的奖励，即t+1期的奖励;相反，如果在t期做出决定，个体会选择提供立即消费的较小奖励，而不是选择等到t+1期获得更大的奖励。同样，当诱人的东西可以立即消费时，人们更容易屈服于诱人但不健康的消费。在这个项目中，我们将与普林斯顿大学的Faruk Gul联合开展，开发一个新的选择理论框架来捕捉这一现象。出发点是一个偏好关系的替代品集。集合表示代理的选项菜单。为了捕捉代理人可能会受到事先不受欢迎的替代品的诱惑的想法，我们允许偏好表现出对承诺的渴望，即，我们允许严格优先选择较小的备选方案集。在这个框架中，我们将诱惑和自我控制确定为行为的核心决定因素。在这项工作中，我们建议将我们已经开发的两个周期模型扩展到无限视界。这一扩展的目的是促进我们的偏好（“自我控制偏好”）在各种环境中的应用，包括标准的竞争性交换经济。我们将探讨自我控制偏好对收入分配的影响，随机代表代理模型中的风险溢价，以及债务合同的可持续性。在一个依赖历史的偏好模型中，我们打算分析成瘾，这是一种与缺乏自我控制密切相关的现象。 为了促进比较静态的结果，我们提供和比较自我控制和比较偏好的承诺的特点措施。