Costly Self-Control and Limited Willpower

Simon Grant, Meng-Yu Liang () and Sung-Lin Hsieh ()
Additional contact information
Meng-Yu Liang: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, https://www.econ.sinica.edu.tw/
Sung-Lin Hsieh: Department of Economics, University of Michigan, https://lsa.umich.edu/econ/about/how-to-reach-us.html

No 18-A009, IEAS Working Paper : academic research from Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Abstract: In Gul and Pesendorfer (2001), a decision-maker, when facing a choice among menus, evaluates each menu in terms of the maximum value of its normative utility net of self-control costs. This paper extends the model such that this maximum is constrained by the condition that the cost of self-control cannot exceed the decision-makerís stock of willpower w. In our characterization, choices within menus that satisfy the weak axiom of revealed preferences (WARP) reveal a constant trade-off between normative and temptation utilities. However, it is the discontinuity of preferences over menus (along with violations of WARP for choices within menus) that reveals w (measured in units of temptation utility), allowing for a behaviorally meaningful comparative measure of self-control across individuals.

Keywords: : temptation; self-control; willpower (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 D81 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic, nep-neu and nep-upt
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econ.sinica.edu.tw/~econ/pdfPaper/18-A009.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Costly self-control and limited willpower (2020)
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:sin:wpaper:18-a009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IEAS Working Paper : academic research from Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by HsiaoyunLiu ().