Learning Self-Control

S. Nageeb Ali ()

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2011, vol. 126, issue 2, 857-893

Abstract: This article examines how a decision maker who is only partially aware of his temptations learns about them over time. In facing temptations, individuals use their experience to forecast future self-control problems and choose the appropriate level of commitment. I demonstrate that rational learning can be perpetually partial and need not result in full sophistication. The main result of this article characterizes necessary and sufficient conditions for learning to converge to full sophistication. I apply this result to a consumption-savings environment in which a decision maker is tempted by present bias and establish a learning-theoretic justification for assuming sophistication in this setting. "An individual who finds himself continuously repudiating his past plans may learn to distrust his future behavior, and may do something about it." -- Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjr014 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Learning Self-Control (2009)
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:oup:qjecon:v:126:y:2011:i:2:p:857-893

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().