We consider discounted-utility models with a reference stream of outcomes. We provide a common framework for the main empirically supported discount functions in terms of three underlying functions: The delay, speedup and generating functions. Each of the delay and speedup functions can be...

Intertemporal tradeoffs play a key role in many personal decisions and policy questions. We describe models of intertemporal choice, identify empirical regularities in choice, and pose new questions for research. The focus for intertemporal choice research is no longer whether the exponential...

Intertemporal tradeoffs play a key role in many personal decisions and policy questions. We describe models of intertemporal choice, identify empirical regularities in choice, and pose new questions for research. The focus for intertemporal choice research is no longer whether the exponential...

This paper estimates the intertemporal labor supply (Frisch) elasticity of substitution exploiting an unusual tax policy change in Switzerland. In the late 1990s, Switzerland switched from an income tax system where current taxes were based on the previous two years' income to a standard annual...

Dynamic models of labor supply suggest that workers intertemporally substitute labor for leisure as a response to transitory wage changes. Empirical estimates of intertemporal substitution are difficult to interpret as wage changes are rarely transitory and workers may not be able to choose...

Our perception of time is both nonlinear and nonstationary, which makes preference reversals possible. I decompose the sources of dynamic inconsistency into a time acceleration effect and a time compression effect. Standard economic models focus only on the second effect. I show that when the...

The discounted logit is widely used to estimate time preferences using data from field and laboratory experiments. Despite its popularity, it exhibits the "problem of the scale": choice probabilities depend on the scale of the value function. When applied to intertemporal choice, the problem the...

The rate of time preference is traditionally defined as the marginal rate of substitution between current and future consumption. This definition is not applicable when outcomes are indivisible. Such is the case in all discrete-choice dynamic problems which arise, for example, in modeling...