The standard neoclassical growth model with Cobb-Douglas production predicts a monotonically declining saving rate, when reasonably calibrated. Ample empirical evidence, however, shows that the transition paths of most countries' saving rates exhibit a statistically significant hump-shaped...

The study of expected utility maximization in continuous-time stochastic market models dates back to the seminal work of Merton 1969 and has since been central to the area of Mathematical Finance. The associated stochastic optimization problems have been extensively studied. The problem...

This paper develops a model of optimal government debt maturity in which the government cannot issue state-contingent bonds and cannot commit to fiscal policy. If the government can perfectly commit, it fully insulates the economy against government spending shocks by purchasing short-term...

We employ the convex time budget approach in a laboratory experiment to measure individual discount rates for time horizons that are longer (5, 10, and 20 years) than what is typically explored in previous literature. We reject hyperbolic discounting in favor of constant discount rates and...

The explicit results for the classical Merton optimal investment/consumption problem rely on the use of constant risk aversion parameters and exponential discounting. However, many studies have suggested that individual investors can have different risk aversions over time, and they discount...

One reason to call an activity a vice and suppress it is that it reduces a person's future happiness more than it increases his present happiness. Gruber & Koszegi (2001) show how a vice tax can increase a person's welfare in a model of multiple selves with hyperbolic preferences across time. An...

We study the question of existence and computation of time-consistent Markov policies of quasi-hyperbolic consumers under a stochastic transition technology and borrowing constraints. Under standard assumptions on preferences, as well as a mild geometric condition on a transition probabilities,...