IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iuiwop/0618.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Deadlines and Distractions

Author

Listed:
  • Saez-Marti, Maria

    (The Research Institute of Industrial Economics)

  • Sjögren, Anna

    (The Research Institute of Industrial Economics)

Abstract

We analyze the effect of deadlines on timing of effort when agents are occasionaly distracted. We show that agents precautiously work early when completion of the task is uncertain, but rather likely. Agents who are rarely distracted will always postpone effort since the risk of not completing is small. As a result, increasing the probability of being distracted may even increase the likelihood of meeting the deadline. We further show that introducing the possibility of having the deadline extended may improve the total probability of completing the task without reducing the probability of completing within the originally announced deadline.

Suggested Citation

  • Saez-Marti, Maria & Sjögren, Anna, 2004. "Deadlines and Distractions," Working Paper Series 618, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 01 Jul 2004.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0618
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/WP618.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2007. "A theory of optimal deadlines," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 493-513, February.
    2. Ted O'Donoghue & Matthew Rabin, 1999. "Incentives for Procrastinators," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 769-816.
    3. Sjögren, Anna & Saez-Marti, Maria, 2004. "On the Timing of Education," Working Paper Series 614, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    4. Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2006. "Time of the essence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 252-272, July.
    5. Fischer, Carolyn, 2001. "Read this paper later: procrastination with time-consistent preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 249-269, November.
    6. Fischer, Carolyn, 1999. "Read This Paper Even Later: Procrastination with Time-Inconsistent Preferences," RFF Working Paper Series dp-99-20, Resources for the Future.
    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. Katolnik, Svetlana & Schöndube, Jens Robert, 2015. "Don't Kill the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs: Strategic Delay in Project Completion," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113046, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Altmann, Steffen & Traxler, Christian & Weinschenk, Philipp, 2017. "Deadlines and Cognitive Limitations," IZA Discussion Papers 11129, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Katolnik, Svetlana & Schöndube, Jens Robert, 2014. "Don't Kill the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs: Strategic Delay in Project Completion," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-533, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    4. Marco Serena, 2018. "Successful Opaque Management," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2018-01_2, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    5. Kyle Hyndman & Alberto Bisin, 2022. "Procrastination, self-imposed deadlines and other commitment devices," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(3), pages 871-897, October.
    6. Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2006. "Time of the essence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 252-272, July.
    7. Marco Serena, 2021. "The value of information on deadlines; successful opaque management," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 50(2), pages 377-397, June.

    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. Akin, Zafer, 2012. "Intertemporal decision making with present biased preferences," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 30-47.
    2. Akin, Zafer & Yavas, Abdullah, 2023. "Elicited Time Preferences and Behavior in Long-Run Projects," MPRA Paper 117133, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Fabian Herweg & Daniel Müller, 2011. "Performance of procrastinators: on the value of deadlines," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 70(3), pages 329-366, March.
    4. Min Gong & David Krantz & Elke Weber, 2014. "Why Chinese discount future financial and environmental gains but not losses more than Americans," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 103-124, October.
    5. O'Donoghue, Ted & Rabin, Matthew, 2002. "Procrastination on Long-Term Projects," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt5jv059fq, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    6. Katolnik, Svetlana & Schöndube, Jens Robert, 2014. "Don't Kill the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs: Strategic Delay in Project Completion," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-533, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    7. Artem Razumovskii, 2023. "Interim Deadline for Procrastinators," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp769, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    8. Katolnik, Svetlana & Schöndube, Jens Robert, 2015. "Don't Kill the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs: Strategic Delay in Project Completion," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113046, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. O'Donoghue, Ted & Rabin, Matthew, 2002. "Procrastination on Long-Term Projects," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt1bz181nv, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    10. O'Donoghue, Ted & Rabin, Matthew, 2008. "Procrastination on long-term projects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 161-175, May.
    11. Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2006. "Time of the essence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 252-272, July.
    12. Raphaël Le Bouc & Mathias Pessiglione, 2022. "A neuro-computational account of procrastination behavior," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-16, December.
    13. Aristotelis Boukouras, 2015. "Separation of Ownership and Control: Delegation as a Commitment Device," Discussion Papers in Economics 15/02, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    14. Méder, Zsombor Z. & Flesch, János & Peeters, Ronald, 2017. "Naiveté and sophistication in dynamic inconsistency," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 40-54.
    15. Stracca, Livio, 2004. "Behavioral finance and asset prices: Where do we stand?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 373-405, June.
    16. Johannes Johnen, 2019. "Automatic‐renewal contracts with heterogeneous consumer inertia," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 765-786, November.
    17. Lurås, Hilde, 2009. "A healthy lifestyle: The product of opportunities and preferences," HERO Online Working Paper Series 2001:11, University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme.
    18. Damgaard, Mette Trier & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2018. "Nudging in education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 313-342.
    19. 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.
    20. Araujo, Luis & Guimaraes, Bernardo, 2015. "Intertemporal coordination with delay options," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 793-810.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Deadlines; Timing of Effort; Optimal Incentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • M50 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hhs:iuiwop:0618. 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: Elisabeth Gustafsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iuiiise.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.