Impatience, Incentives, and Obesity

This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives, and body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we first show that greater impatience increases BMI even after controlling for demographic, human capital, and occupational characteristics as well as income and risk preference. Next, we provide evidence of an interaction effect between time preference and food prices, with cheaper food leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the most impatience. The interaction of changing economic incentives with heterogeneous discounting may help explain why increases in BMI have been concentrated amongst the right tail of the distribution, where the health consequences are especially severe. Lastly, we model time-inconsistent preferences by computing individualsquasi-hyperbolic discounting parameters (β and δ). Both long-run patience (δ) and present-bias (β) predict BMI, suggesting obesity is partly attributable to rational intertemporal tradeoffs but also partly to time inconsistency.

Impatience, Incentives and Obesity

This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives, and body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we first show that greater impatience increases BMI even after controlling for demographic, human capital, and occupational characteristics as well as income and risk preference. Next, we provide evidence of an interaction effect between time preference and food prices, with cheaper food leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the most impatience. The interaction of changing economic incentives with heterogeneous discounting may help explain why increases in BMI have been concentrated amongst the right tail of the distribution, where the health consequences are especially severe. Lastly, we model time-inconsistent preferences by computing individuals’ quasi-hyperbolic discounting parameters (δ and β). Both long-run patience (δ) and present-bias (β) predict BMI, suggesting obesity is partly attributable to rational intertemporal tradeoffs but also partly to time inconsistency

Time Preferences and Consumer Behavior

We investigate the predictive power of survey-elicited time preferences using a representative sample of US residents. In regressions controlling for demographics and risk preferences, we show that the discount factor elicited from choice experiments using multiple price lists and real payments predicts various health, energy, and financial outcomes, including overall self-reported health, smoking, drinking, car fuel efficiency, and credit card balance. We allow for time-inconsistent preferences and find that the long-run and present bias discount factors (δ and β) are each significantly associated in the expected direction with several of these outcomes. Finally, we explore alternate measures of time preference. Elicited discount factors are correlated with several such measures, including self-reported willpower. A multiple proxies approach using these alternate measures shows that our estimated associations between the time-consistent discount factor and health, energy, and financial outcomes may be conservative

Are people more risk-taking in the presence of the opposite sex?

This paper investigates whether exposure to the opposite sex induces greater risk-taking in both males and females. Experimental subjects evaluated a series of hypothetical monetary gambles before and after viewing pictures of opposite sex faces; control subjects viewed pictures of cars. Both males and females viewing opposite sex photos displayed a significant increase in risk tolerance, whereas the control subjects exhibited no significant change. Surprisingly, the attractiveness of the photo had no effect; subjects viewing photographs of attractive opposite sex persons displayed similar results as those viewing photographs of unattractive people.Risk preferences Probability discounting Experimental economics Behavioral economics Arousal effect

Subadditivity, patience, and utility: The effects of dividing time intervals

Previous work has demonstrated that time discounting is subadditive: individuals exhibit more impatience evaluating a delay as divided into sub-intervals. This paper argues that subdivision affects both components of intertemporal choice, the utility function as well as the intertemporal discount function. In my first experiment, I demonstrate that differential concavity of utility for gains and convexity for losses implies that the discounting of losses is even more subadditive than the discounting of gains. Individuals display even more relative impatience over divided time intervals for negative amounts of money than for positive amounts of money. My second experiment utilizes alternative elicitation methods, which impose an intertemporal status quo, to highlight these utility effects. Subadditivity is stronger when delaying an early gain than for hastening a later gain. The reverse pattern holds for losses; discounting is more subadditive when hastening a later loss than for delaying an earlier loss.Intertemporal choice Temporal discounting Time preferences Framing effect Experimental economics Behavioral economics Subadditive discounting

Impatience, Incentives, and Obesity

This paper hypothesizes that the interaction of changing economic incentives with hyperbolic discounting can help explain the increasing mean and variance of the body mass index (BMI) distribution. We present a model predicting that impatient individuals should both weigh more than patient individuals and experience sharper increases in weight in response to falling food prices. We then test these predictions using individuallevel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth matched with local food prices from the Council for Community and Economic Research. Both the beta and delta components of a quasi-hyperbolic discount function predict BMI and obesity even after controlling for demographic, human capital, occupational, and …nancial characteristics as well as risk preference. Obesity is therefore partly attributable to rational intertemporal tradeo¤s but also partly to time inconsistency. We then show that the interaction of present bias with local food price predicts BMI, with falling food prices leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the greatest present bias. These results provide insight into why, in an environment of cheaper and more readily available food