Most economic models assume that time preferences are stable over time, but the evidence on their long-term stability is lacking. We study whether and how time preferences change over the life cycle, exploiting representative long-term panel data. We provide new evidence that discount rates...

"Buffer-stock" versions of the dynamic stochastic optimizing model of saving are now standard in the consumption literature. This paper builds theoretical foundations for rigorous understanding of the main characteristics of buffer stock models, including the existence of a target level of...

There is concern that present-biased agents incur too much debt because of its deferred costs – concern that has influenced regulation of consumer credit. While this concern is valid when debt is used to finance current consumption, credit may increase efficiency when it is used to fund...

We propose a simple method for eliciting individual time preferences without estimating utility functions even in settings where background consumption changes over time. It relies on lottery tickets with high rewards. In a standard intertemporal choice model high rewards decouple lottery...

We study whether and how parents interfere paternalistically in their children’s intertemporal decision-making. Based on experiments with over 2,000 members of 610 families, we find that parents anticipate their children’s present bias and aim to mitigate it. Using a novel method to measure...

This paper extends the project initiated in and studies a lifecycle portfolio choice problem with borrowing constraints and finite retirement time in which an agent receives labor income that adjusts to financial market shocks in a path dependent way. The novelty here, with respect to, is the...

We examine the dynamic interaction of the population age structure, economic dependency, and fertility, paying particular attention to the role of intergenerational transfers. In the short run, a reduction in fertility produces a %u201Cdemographic dividend%u201D that allows for higher...

This paper examines the impact of limiting the cashback mechanism on e-commerce pricing strategies and consumer purchase behavior. By refunding a part of the transactional amount, the websites are using the wallet cash as a promotional vehicle for future purchases. This cashback limit phenomenon...

This paper extends the robust mean-variance analysis of Maccheroni et al. (2013) by investigating the contribution of ambiguity prudence to the optimal stock allocation when the investor evaluates portfolio compositions as described by the smooth model under ambiguity criterion. Ambiguity...

This paper constructs a simple model to examine decisions on public and private health spending under majority voting. In the model, agents with heterogeneous incomes choose how much to consume and spend on health care and vote for public health expenditure. The health status of an agent is...