Exponential Discounting Bias

Orlando Gomes, Alexandra Lopes () and Tiago Sequeira

No 12-05, Working Papers Series 2 from ISCTE-IUL, Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL)

Abstract: We address intertemporal utility maximization under a general discount function that nests the exponential discounting and the quasi-hyperbolic discounting cases as particular specifi?cations. The suggested framework intends to capture one important anomaly typically found when addressing the way agents discount the future, namely the evidence pointing to the prevalence of decreasing impatience. The referred anomaly can be perceived as a bias relatively to what would be a benchmark exponential discounting setting, and is modeled as such. The general discounting framework is used to address a standard optimal growth model in discrete time. Transitional dynamics and stability properties of the corresponding dynamic setup are studied. An extension of the standard growth model to the case of habit persistence is also considered.

Keywords: Intertemporal Preferences; Exponential Discounting; Quasi-hyperbolic Discounting; Optimal Growth; Habit Persistence; Transitional Dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 D91 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-07-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://bru-unide.iscte.pt/RePEc/pdfs/12-05.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://bru-unide.iscte.pt/RePEc/pdfs/12-05.pdf [302 Found]--> https://bru.iscte-iul.pt/RePEc/pdfs/12-05.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Exponential discounting bias (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isc:iscwp2:bruwp1205

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers Series 2 from ISCTE-IUL, Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henrique Monteiro ().