To decarbonize the power sector policy-makers need to commit to long-term credible rules for climate and energy policy. Otherwise, time-inconsistent policy-making will impair investments into low-carbon technologies. However, the future benefits and costs of decarbonization are subject to...

In "How should the distant future be discounted when discount rates are uncertain?" (2010) Gollier and Weitzman claimed having solved the Weitzman-Gollier puzzle, concluding from a risk-averse utility maximizing model that Weitzman discounting is qualitatively correct and that when uncertain...

Standard analyses of economic policy assume exponential discounting, even though empirical and experimental evidence shows that preferences are time-inconsistent and discounting is hyperbolic. When policy makers - or the voters they must satisfy - apply smaller discount rates for long-term than...

Within a continuous time life cycle model of consumption and savings, I study the properties of the most general class of additive intertemporal utility functionals. They are not necessarily stationary, and do not necessarily multiplicatively separate a discount factor from "per-period utility"....

We investigate a discrete-time mean-risk portfolio selection problem, where risk is measured by the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). By embedding this time-inconsistent problem into a family of expected utility maximization problems with a piecewise linear utility function, we solve the problem...

We study in an online, real-effort experiment how the bracketing of non-binding goals affects performance in a work-leisure self-control problem. We externally induce the goal bracket - daily goals or a weekly goal - and within that bracket let subjects set goals for how much they want to work...

In this paper, we present a novel representation of a verification result for the equilibrium control law of a general class of portfolio problems where the standard dynamic programming principle does not hold. The novel representation provides simple and easy application of the theorem and we...

Standard economic theory suggests that individuals know best how to make themselves happy. Thus, policies designed to encourage “better” behaviors will only reduce people’s happiness. Recently, however, economists have explored the role of impatience, especially difficulties with delaying...