In many occupations, the consequences of agents' actions become known only over time. Firms can then pay agents based on early but noisy performance measures, or later but more accurate ones. I study this choice within a two-period model in which an agent's action generates an output with delay,...

Earlier work has shown that procrastination can be explained by quasihyperbolic discounting. We present a model of effort choice over time that shifts the focus away from completion to performance on a single task. We show that quasi-hyperbolic discounting is detrimental for performance. More...