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In behavioral economics, time preference (or time discounting, [1] delay discounting, temporal discounting, [2] long-term orientation [3]) is the current relative valuation placed on receiving a good at an earlier date compared with receiving it at a later date. [1] Applications for these preferences include finance, health, climate change.
The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a study on delayed gratification in 1970 led by psychologist Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University. [1] In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time.
Hyperbolic discounting, where discounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. Hyperbolic discounting leads to choices that are inconsistent over time—people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning. [52]
Hyperbolic discounting is mathematically described as = + where g(D) is the discount factor that multiplies the value of the reward, D is the delay in the reward, and k is a parameter governing the degree of discounting (for example, the interest rate).
In addition to risk preference, another central concept in economics is intertemporal choices which are decisions that involve costs and benefits that are distributed over time. Intertemporal choice research studies the expected utility that humans assign to events occurring at different times.
Discounting can also be related to the risk sensitivity of animals. Rather than relating risk to delay, risk sensitivity acts as a function of delay discounting. [54] In a study conducted by Haden and Platt, macaque monkeys were given the choice of a medium reward that they knew they would receive, versus a more risky choice.
It is calculated as the present discounted value of future utility, and for people with time preference for sooner rather than later gratification, it is less than the future utility. The utility of an event x occurring at future time t under utility function u, discounted back to the present (time 0) using discount factor β, is
Exponential discounting yields time-consistent preferences. Exponential discounting and, more generally, time-consistent preferences are often assumed in rational choice theory, since they imply that all of a decision-maker's selves will agree with the choices made by each self. Any decision that the individual makes for himself in advance will ...