When Decisions Require Consideration, People Give Up Control

Holly Dykstra, Christine Exley, Muriel Niederle and Heather Wong

No 21005, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Agents insist on agency for many reasons, including a desire to obtain their preferred choice and a desire for control. Agents may also forgo agency because they desire to avoid the costs of considering a decision. In a large experiment, we present decision-makers with a menu of investment options and investigate whether they insist on agency or let someone else choose for them. We find that requiring individuals to consider their choice makes them more willing to forgo agency. This consideration effect arises even among experienced decision-makers and across a range of decision-maker characteristics. While we observe few differences in participants' willingness to forgo agency across demographic groups, people expect many differences to arise, including that women would be more willing to forgo agency than men.

Keywords: Agency; Delegation; Paternalism; Experimental economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D01 D03 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21005 (application/pdf)

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:cpr:ceprdp:21005

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().