Discount factors ex post and ex ante, and discounted utility anomalies

Svetlana Boyarchenko and Sergei Levendorskii
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Sergei Levendorskii: The University of Texas, Austin

Microeconomics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The real options approach is used to explain discounted utility anomalies as artifacts of the optimizing behavior of an individual with standard preferences, who perceives the utility from consumption in the future as uncertain. For this ndividual, waiting is valuable because uncertainty is revealed over time. The fair price (or compensation) that the individual agrees to pay (or accept) today is the expected value of utility of the future gain (or loss) multiplied by a certain non- exponential factor which weinterpret as a discount factor ex ante. The factors ex ante are different for gains and losses, and depend on the utility function and underlying uncertainty. After the decision of exchange had been made, valuation ex post reduces to calculation of the standard expected present value. We provide analytic expressions and numerical examples for discount factors assuming different utility functions and models of uncertainty, and demonstrate that our explanation of discounted utility anomalies is robust.

Keywords: real options; time preference; discounted utility anomalies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 D81 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2005-10-27, Revised 2005-12-13
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 36
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpmi:0510013

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