Intertemporal Tradeoffs for Gains and Losses: An Experimental Measurement of Discounted Utility
Year: 2010
Type: preprint
Abstract: This paper is the first to measure utility in intertemporal choice and presents new and more \nrobust evidence on the discounting of money outcomes. Our measurement method is parameterfree \nin the sense that it requires no assumptions about utility or discounting. We found that \nintertemporal utility was concave for gains and convex for losses, consistent with a hypothesis \nput forward by Loewenstein and Prelec (1992). Utility in intertemporal choice was close to \nutility in decision under risk and uncertainty, suggesting that there may be one unifying concept \nof utility that applies to all of economics. The existence of one concept of utility is important for \napplied economics, because it largely reduces data requirements. Discount rates declined over \ntime, but less so than has been observed in previous studies that assumed linear utility. Of the \nmain discounted utility models, Loewenstein and Prelec’s (1992) generalized hyperbolic \ndiscounting model best fitted our data. The widely-used quasi-hyperbolic model fitted the data \nonly slightly better than constant discounting. Finally, we obtained evidence of an asymmetry in \ndiscounting between gains and losses, which, in contrast with earlier findings, cannot be \nexplained by a framing effect.
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2299783345