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Cited by 3,121

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 6 of the 6 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Doing It Now or Later

O'Donoghue, Ted, Rabin, Matthew·1999·American Economic Review
DOI 10.1257/aer.89.1.103
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Abstract

We examine self-control problems—modeled as time-inconsistent, present-biased preferences—in a model where a person must do an activity exactly once. We emphasize two distinctions: Do activities involve immediate costs or immediate rewards, and are people sophisticated or naive about future self-control problems? Naive people procrastinate immediate-cost activities and preproperate—do too soon—immediate-reward activities. Sophistication mitigates procrastination, but exacerbates preproperation. Moreover, with immediate costs, a small present bias can severely harm only naive people, whereas with immediate rewards it can severely harm only sophisticated people. Lessons for savings, addiction, and elsewhere are discussed. (JEL A12, B49, C70, D11, D60, D74, D91, E21)

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Metadata

Authors
O'Donoghue, T., & Rabin, M.
Venue
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Published
1999-03-01
Volume
89
Issue
1
Pages
103-124
ISSN
0002-8282 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1257/aer.89.1.103
OpenAlex
W2100056252
Cited by
3,121
References
6
FWCI
18.70
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Doing It Now or Later. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1257/aer.89.1.103
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O'Donoghue, T., & Rabin, M. (1999). Doing It Now or Later. American Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.89.1.103

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.