Beliefs as a means of self-control? : evidence from a dynamic student survey

Felix Bönisch, Tobias König, Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Georg Weizsäcker

We repeatedly elicit beliefs about the returns to study effort, in a large university course. A behavioral model of quasi-hyperbolic discounting and malleable beliefs predicts that the dynamics of beliefs mirrors the importance of exerting self-control, such that believed returns increase as the exam approaches, and drop post-exam. Exploiting variation in exam timing to control for common information shocks, we find this prediction confirmed: average believed study returns increase by about 20% over the period before the exam, and drop by about the same afterwards. Additional analyses further support the hypothesized mechanism that beliefs serve as a means of self-control.

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Year of publication:	March 2024
Authors:	Bönisch, Felix ; König, Tobias ; Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Sebastian ; Weizsäcker, Georg
Publisher:	Munich, Germany : CESifo
Subject:	beliefs \| present bias \| self-control \| effort \| survey \| Konsumentenverhalten \| Consumer behaviour \| Studierende \| Students \| Erwartungsbildung \| Expectation formation \| Verhaltensökonomik \| Behavioral economics \| Systematischer Fehler \| Bias \| Persönlichkeitspsychologie \| Personality psychology \| Meinung \| Opinion \| Experiment \| Befragung \| Interview \| Intertemporale Entscheidung \| Intertemporal choice