Year: 2014
Type: report
Abstract: We study procrastination in the context of a field experiment involving students who must exert costly effort to complete certain tasks by a fixed deadline.Descriptively, we document a strong demand for commitment, in the form of self-imposed deadlines, which appear to be associated with students' self-reported psychological characteristics and cost of time.We structurally estimate students' present-bias and cost of time by fitting the experimental data to a stylized stopping time choice model.We find that present-bias is relatively widespread but that having multiple repeated tasks appears to activate effective internal self-control mechanisms.Finally, we also document an important form of partial naïveté on the part of students in anticipating their ability to self-control when setting deadlines.
DOI: 10.3386/w19874
Authors: Alberto Bisin, Kyle Hyndman
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Southern Methodist University
OpenAlex ID: W3122291209