Anomalies in Intertemporal Choice: Evidence and an Interpretation
Abstract
Research on decision making under uncertainly has been strongly influenced by the documentation of numerous expected utility (EU) anomalies—behaviors that violate the expected utility axioms. The relative lack of progress on the closely related topic of intertemporal choice is partly due to the absence of an analogous set of discounted utility (DU) anomalies. We enumerate a set of DU anomalies analogous to the EU anomalies and propose a model that accounts for the anomalies, as well as other intertemporal choice phenomena incompatible with DU. We discuss implications for savings behavior, estimation of discount rates, and choice framing effects.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
People are more impatient when an immediate option is available than when both options are delayed.
“people are more impatient when an immediate option is present compared with when both options are in the future (22).”
From Adolescent impatience decreases with increased frontostriatal connectivity (2015) · cites this paper as [22]
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 33 · Cited by 2,305
- Authors
- Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D.
- Affiliations
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Venue
- The Quarterly Journal of Economics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1992-05-01
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 573-597
- ISSN
- 0033-5533 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-4650
- OpenAlex
- W2094104200
- Cited by
- 2,305
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 47 · 2025: 62 · 2024: 92 · 2023: 78 · 2022: 80 · 2021: 108 · 2020: 75 · 2019: 116 · 2018: 100 · 2017: 98 · 2016: 116 · 2015: 111 · 2014: 100 · 2013: 112 · 2012: 104
- FWCI
- 5.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Quarterly Journal of Economics (publishedVersion)
- KiltHub Repository (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Keywords
- intertemporal choice, time preference, saving behavior, discount rate estimation, framing effects, decision making under uncertainty
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
