IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedmqr/y2001isump13-24nv.25no.3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Looking for evidence of time-inconsistent preferences in asset market data

Author

Listed:
  • Narayana R. Kocherlakota

Abstract

This study argues that strong evidence contradicting the traditional assumption of time-consistent preferences is not available. The study builds and analyzes the implications of a deterministic general equilibrium model and compares them to data from the U.S. asset market. The model implies that (1) because of dynamic arbitrage, the prices of retradable assets cannot reveal whether preferences are time-inconsistent; but (2) the prices of commitment assets, investments which must be held for their lifetime, can. These prices will be higher than the present values of their future payoffs only when preferences are time-inconsistent. And (3) when preferences are time-inconsistent, people will not hold both retradable and commitment assets. Empirical observations on two examples of commitment assets?education and individual retirement accounts?are not consistent with these model implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2001. "Looking for evidence of time-inconsistent preferences in asset market data," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 25(Sum), pages 13-24.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmqr:y:2001:i:sum:p:13-24:n:v.25no.3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2532.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2532.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Per Krusell & Anthony A. Smith, Jr., 2003. "Consumption--Savings Decisions with Quasi--Geometric Discounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 365-375, January.
    2. Card, David, 1999. "The causal effect of education on earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 30, pages 1801-1863, Elsevier.
    3. Kocherlakota, Narayana R., 1996. "Reconsideration-Proofness: A Refinement for Infinite Horizon Time Inconsistency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 33-54, July.
    4. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
    5. Hansen, Lars Peter & Richard, Scott F, 1987. "The Role of Conditioning Information in Deducing Testable," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 587-613, May.
    6. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    7. Robert J. Barro, 1999. "Ramsey Meets Laibson in the Neoclassical Growth Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1125-1152.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Startz Richard & Tsang Kwok Ping, 2012. "Nonexponential Discounting: A Direct Test And Perhaps A New Puzzle," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-35, November.
    2. Luttmer, Erzo G.J. & Mariotti, Thomas, 2007. "Efficiency and equilibrium when preferences are time-inconsistent," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 493-506, January.
    3. Kevin X.D. Huang & Zheng Liu & John Qi Zhu, 2015. "Temptation and Self‐Control: Some Evidence and Applications," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(4), pages 581-615, June.
    4. Guilherme Carmona, 2002. "Equilibrium outcomes in repeated two-person, zero-sum games," Nova SBE Working Paper Series wp419, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics.
    5. P. A. Forsyth & K. R. Vetzal, 2017. "Robust Asset Allocation For Long-Term Target-Based Investing," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(03), pages 1-32, May.
    6. Noor, Jawwad, 2007. "Commitment and self-control," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 1-34, July.
    7. Woźny Łukasz, 2016. "On the Price of Commitment Assets in a General Equilibrium Model with Credit Constraints and Tempted Consumers," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 16(2), pages 579-598, June.
    8. David K. Backus & Bryan R. Routledge & Stanley E. Zin, 2005. "Exotic Preferences for Macroeconomists," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2004, Volume 19, pages 319-414, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Leeat Yariv & David Laibson, 2004. "Safety in Markets: An Impossibility Theorem for Dutch Books," 2004 Meeting Papers 867, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Kannai, Yakar & Selden, Larry & Wei, Xiao, 2014. "Myopic separability," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 125-144.
    11. Faruk Gul & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2004. "Self Control, Revealed Preferences and Consumption Choice," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(2), pages 243-264, April.
    12. Paul Calcott & Vladimir Petkov, 2022. "Excessive consumption and present bias," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(1), pages 113-134, July.
    13. Leeat Yariv, 2004. "Safety in Markets: An Impossibility Theorem for Dutch Books," Theory workshop papers 658612000000000072, UCLA Department of Economics.
    14. Kang, Jingoo & Kang, Minwook, 2022. "Durable goods as commitment devices under quasi-hyperbolic discounting," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    15. Calcott, Paul & Petkov, Vladimir, 2024. "How innocuous is it to approximate globally decreasing impatience with quasi-hyperbolic discounting?," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    16. Benhabib, Jess & Bisin, Alberto, 2005. "Modeling internal commitment mechanisms and self-control: A neuroeconomics approach to consumption-saving decisions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 460-492, August.
    17. Jin, Lawrence & Kang, Minwook, 2023. "Human-capital investments as a commitment device," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lilia Maliar & Serguei Maliar, 2016. "Ruling Out Multiplicity of Smooth Equilibria in Dynamic Games: A Hyperbolic Discounting Example," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 243-261, June.
    2. Caliendo, Frank N. & Findley, T. Scott, 2019. "Commitment and welfare," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 210-234.
    3. Kemptner, Daniel & Tolan, Songül, 2018. "The role of time preferences in educational decision making," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 25-39.
    4. Christopher Harris & David Laibson, 2013. "Instantaneous Gratification," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(1), pages 205-248.
    5. Chatterjee, Satyajit & Eyigungor, Burcu, 2016. "Continuous Markov equilibria with quasi-geometric discounting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 467-494.
    6. Tyson, Christopher J., 2008. "Management of a capital stock by Strotz's naive planner," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 2214-2239, July.
    7. Startz Richard & Tsang Kwok Ping, 2012. "Nonexponential Discounting: A Direct Test And Perhaps A New Puzzle," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-35, November.
    8. Ivar Ekeland & Traian A. Pirvu, 2007. "Investment and Consumption without Commitment," Papers 0708.0588, arXiv.org.
    9. Takeo Hori & Koichi Futagami, 2019. "A Non‐unitary Discount Rate Model," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 86(341), pages 139-165, January.
    10. Hammond, Peter J & Zank, Horst, 2013. "Rationality and Dynamic Consistency under Risk and Uncertainty," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1033, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    11. Geoffrey Heal & Antony Millner, 2013. "Discounting under Disagreement," NBER Working Papers 18999, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Michal Bauer & Julie Chytilová, 2007. "Does Education Matter in Patience Formation? Evidence from Ugandan Villages," Working Papers IES 2007/10, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Feb 2007.
    13. Lilia Maliar & Serguei Maliar, 2004. "Quasi‐geometric discounting: A closed‐form solution under the exponential utility function," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(2), pages 201-206, April.
    14. Lilia Maliar & Serguei Maliar, 2003. "Solving The Neoclassical Growth Model With Quasi-Geometric Discounting: Non-Linear Euler-Equation Models," Working Papers. Serie AD 2003-23, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    15. Kang, Minwook, 2021. "Aggregate savings under quasi-hyperbolic versus exponential discounting," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    16. Kirill Borissov & Mikhail Pakhnin & Ronald Wendner, 2020. "Naive Agents with Quasi-hyperbolic Discounting and Perfect Foresight," EUSP Department of Economics Working Paper Series 2020/03, European University at St. Petersburg, Department of Economics.
    17. Liya Liu & Yingjie Niu & Yuanping Wang & Jinqiang Yang, 2020. "Optimal consumption with time-inconsistent preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(3), pages 785-815, October.
    18. Guo, Nick L. & Caliendo, Frank N., 2014. "Time-inconsistent preferences and time-inconsistent policies," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 102-108.
    19. S. Nageeb Ali, 2011. "Learning Self-Control," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(2), pages 857-893.
    20. Nicolas Vieille & Jörgen Weibull, 2009. "Multiple solutions under quasi-exponential discounting," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 39(3), pages 513-526, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedmqr:y:2001:i:sum:p:13-24:n:v.25no.3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kate Hansel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.