Human utility embodies a number of seemingly irrational aspects. The leading example in this paper is that utilities often depend on the presence of salient unchosen alternatives. Our focus is to understand <i>why</i> an evolutionary process might optimally lead to such seemingly dysfunctional features...

We study infinitely repeated games with observable actions, where players have present-biased (so-called beta-delta) preferences. We give a two-step procedure to characterize Strotz-Pollak equilibrium payoffs: compute the continuation payoff set using recursive techniques, and then use this set...