Time Preferences and Food Choice

Andy Brownback, Alex Imas and Michael Kuhn

No 31726, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Healthy food choices are a canonical example used to illustrate the importance of time preferences in behavioral economics. However, the literature lacks a direct demonstration that they are well-predicted by incentivized time preference measures. We offer direct evidence by combining a novel, two-question, incentivized time preference measurement with data from a field experiment that includes grocery purchases and consumption. Our present-focus measure is highly predictive of food choice, capturing a number of behaviors consistent with self-control problems, which provides direct evidence for the common assumption that important aspects of nutrition are driven by time preferences.

JEL-codes: D03 H20 I12 I39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-ger and nep-hea
Note: CH DEV PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31726.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:31726

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31726
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).