An Empirical Study on Intertemporal Decision Making Under Risk

This study compares time preference in the cases of certainty and risk. We analyze both matching and choice behavior. We find that violations of the stationarity axiom are restricted to matching behavior, both for certainty and risk. We also compare the discounting of certain and risky outcomes as well as the discounting of gains and losses. In matching tasks, certain outcomes are discounted more than risky ones. We could not confirm these results in a choice task. Gains and losses are not found to be discounted at different rates.