Commitment and Self-Control

Microeconomics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The literature on self-control problems has typically concentrated on immediate temptations. This paper studies a Gul and Pesendorfer (2001, 2004) style model in which decision-makers are affected by temptations that lie in the future. While temptation is commonly understood to give rise to a demand for commitment, it is shown that `temptation by future consumption' can induce its absence. The model also exhibits procrastination, provides an alternative to projection bias as an explanation for some experimental results, and can simultaneously account for myopic and hyperopic behavior. The evidence on preference reversals supports temptation by future consumption, and suggests that it may not be restricted to short time horizons.

Keywords: Self-Control; Temptation; Commitment; Preference Reversals; Procrastination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 D2 D3 D4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2005-09-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 46
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/mic/papers/0509/0509008.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Commitment and self-control (2007)
Working Paper: Commitment and Self-Control (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpmi:0509008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Microeconomics from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ().