IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lui/cesare/1401.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Doing it now or later with payoff externalities: Experimental evidence on social time preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Ponti
  • Ismael Rodriguez-Lara
  • Daniela Di Cagno

Abstract

We report experimental evidence on the effects of social preferences on intertemporal decisions. To this aim, we set up an intertemporal Dictator Game and investigate whether (and how) subjects change their choices, compared with those they had taken in absence of any payoff externality in a previous stage of the experiment. We run two treatments -INFO and BELIEF, respectively- depending on whether Dictators know -or are asked to elicit- their assigned Recipients' risk and time preferences. We find that high (own) risk aversion is associated with low (own) discounting. We also found that (heterogeneous) social time preferences are signifcant determinants of choices, in that Dictators display a marked propensity to account for the Recipients' intertemporal concerns.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Ponti & Ismael Rodriguez-Lara & Daniela Di Cagno, 2014. "Doing it now or later with payoff externalities: Experimental evidence on social time preferences," Working Papers CESARE 1/2014, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, LUISS Guido Carli.
    • Handle: RePEc:lui:cesare:1401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://economiaefinanza.luiss.it/sites/ricerca.economiaefinanza.luiss.it/files/IVIE_STP14.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ola Andersson & Håkan J. Holm & Jean-Robert Tyran & Erik Wengström, 2016. "Deciding for Others Reduces Loss Aversion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 29-36, January.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    3. Andersen, Steffen & Harrison, Glenn W. & Lau, Morten I. & Rutström, E. Elisabet, 2014. "Discounting behavior: A reconsideration," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 15-33.
    4. Matthias Sutter & Martin G. Kocher & Daniela Glätzle-Rützler & Stefan T. Trautmann, 2013. "Impatience and Uncertainty: Experimental Decisions Predict Adolescents' Field Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 510-531, February.
    5. O'Donoghue, Ted & Rabin, Matthew, 1997. "Doing It Now or Later," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt7t44m5b0, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    6. Matthew Rabin & Ted O'Donoghue, 1999. "Doing It Now or Later," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 103-124, March.
    7. Susan Laury & Melayne McInnes & J. Todd Swarthout, 2012. "Avoiding the curves: Direct elicitation of time preferences," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 181-217, June.
    8. Yoram Halevy, 2008. "Strotz Meets Allais: Diminishing Impatience and the Certainty Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 1145-1162, June.
    9. repec:bla:scandj:v:102:y:2000:i:2:p:235-51 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. John D. Hey & Chris Orme, 2018. "Investigating Generalizations Of Expected Utility Theory Using Experimental Data," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Experiments in Economics Decision Making and Markets, chapter 3, pages 63-98, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. O’Donoghue, Ted & Rabin, Matthew, 2002. "Addiction and Present-Biased Preferences," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt3v86x53j, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    12. Starmer, Chris & Sugden, Robert, 1991. "Does the Random-Lottery Incentive System Elicit True Preferences? An Experimental Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 971-978, September.
    13. Juan Camilo Cardenas & Jeffrey Carpenter, 2008. "Behavioural Development Economics: Lessons from Field Labs in the Developing World," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(3), pages 311-338.
    14. Thomas Epper & Helga Fehr-Duda & Adrian Bruhin, 2011. "Viewing the future through a warped lens: Why uncertainty generates hyperbolic discounting," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 169-203, December.
    15. Steffen Andersen & Glenn Harrison & Morten Lau & E. Rutström, 2009. "Elicitation using multiple price list formats," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(3), pages 365-366, September.
    16. Tomomi Tanaka & Colin F. Camerer & Quang Nguyen, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences: Linking Experimental and Household Survey Data from Vietnam," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 557-571, March.
    17. John Hey & Jinkwon Lee, 2005. "Do Subjects Separate (or Are They Sophisticated)?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(3), pages 233-265, September.
    18. Andersson, Ola & Holm, Håkan J. & Tyran, Jean-Robert & Wengström, Erik, 2013. "Risking Other People’s Money: Experimental Evidence on Bonus Schemes, Competition, and Altruism," Working Paper Series 989, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    19. E. S. Phelps & R. A. Pollak, 1968. "On Second-Best National Saving and Game-Equilibrium Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 35(2), pages 185-199.
    20. Maribeth Coller & Glenn W. Harrison & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2012. "Latent process heterogeneity in discounting behavior," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 64(2), pages 375-391, April.
    21. Antonio Cabrales & Raffaele Miniaci & Marco Piovesan & Giovanni Ponti, 2010. "Social Preferences and Strategic Uncertainty: An Experiment on Markets and Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2261-2278, December.
    22. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier l'Haridon & Corina Paraschiv, 2013. "Do Couples Discount Future Consequences Less than Individuals?," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) 201320, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS.
    23. Kovarik, Jaromir, 2009. "Giving it now or later: Altruism and discounting," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 102(3), pages 152-154, March.
    24. Maurizio Mazzocco, 2007. "Household Intertemporal Behaviour: A Collective Characterization and a Test of Commitment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 857-895.
    25. James Andreoni & Michael A. Kuhn & Charles Sprenger, 2013. "On Measuring Time Preferences," NBER Working Papers 19392, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    27. Quang Nguyen & Colin Camerer & Tomomi Tanaka, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences Linking Experimental and Household Data from Vietnam," Post-Print halshs-00547090, HAL.
    28. Robin Cubitt & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 1998. "On the Validity of the Random Lottery Incentive System," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(2), pages 115-131, September.
    29. Shane Frederick & George Loewenstein & Ted O'Donoghue, 2002. "Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 351-401, June.
    30. Catherine C. Eckel & Philip J. Grossman, 2008. "Forecasting Risk Attitudes: An Experimental Study Using Actual and Forecast Gamble Choices," Monash Economics Working Papers archive-01, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    31. Cheung, Stephen L., 2012. "Risk Preferences Are Not Time Preferences: Comment," IZA Discussion Papers 6762, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    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. Cueva, Carlos & Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Iñigo & Mata-Pérez, Esther & Ponti, Giovanni & Sartarelli, Marcello & Yu, Haihan & Zhukova, Vita, 2016. "Cognitive (ir)reflection: New experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 81-93.
    2. Lau Lilleholt, 2019. "Cognitive ability and risk aversion: A systematic review and meta analysis," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(3), pages 234-279, May.
    3. repec:cup:judgdm:v:14:y:2019:i:3:p:234-279 is not listed on IDEAS

    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. Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael & Ponti, Giovanni, 2017. "Social motives vs social influence: An experiment on interdependent time preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 177-194.
    2. Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael & Ponti, Giovanni, 2017. "Social Motives vs Social Influence: an Experiment on Time Preferences," MPRA Paper 76486, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Ubfal, Diego, 2016. "How general are time preferences? Eliciting good-specific discount rates," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 150-170.
    4. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Miraldo, Marisa & Stavropoulou, Charitini & van der Pol, Marjon, 2016. "Doctor–patient differences in risk and time preferences: A field experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 171-182.
    5. Sophie Clot & Charlotte Y. Stanton & Marc Willinger, 2017. "Are impatient farmers more risk-averse? Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in rural Uganda," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(2), pages 156-169, January.
    6. W. David Bradford & Paul Dolan & Matteo M. Galizzi, 2019. "Looking ahead: Subjective time perception and individual discounting," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 43-69, February.
    7. Jindrich Matousek & Tomas Havranek & Zuzana Irsova, 2022. "Individual discount rates: a meta-analysis of experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(1), pages 318-358, February.
    8. Olivier Toubia & Eric Johnson & Theodoros Evgeniou & Philippe Delquié, 2013. "Dynamic Experiments for Estimating Preferences: An Adaptive Method of Eliciting Time and Risk Parameters," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(3), pages 613-640, June.
    9. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Machado, Sara R. & Miniaci, Raffaele, 2016. "Temporal stability, cross-validity, and external validity of risk preferences measures: experimental evidence from a UK representative sample," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67554, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Drichoutis, Andreas & Nayga, Rodolfo, 2013. "A reconciliation of time preference elicitation methods," MPRA Paper 46916, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 12 May 2013.
    11. Uttara Balakrishnan & Johannes Haushofer & Pamela Jakiela, 2020. "How soon is now? Evidence of present bias from convex time budget experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(2), pages 294-321, June.
    12. Julia Ihli, Hanna & Chiputwa, Brian & Winter, Etti & Gassner, Anja, 2022. "Risk and time preferences for participating in forest landscape restoration: The case of coffee farmers in Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    13. Eriksen, Kristoffer W. & Kvaløy, Ola & Luzuriaga, Miguel, 2020. "Risk-taking on behalf of others," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    14. Holzmeister, Felix & Stefan, Matthias, 2019. "The Risk Elicitation Puzzle Revisited: Across-Methods (In)consistency?," OSF Preprints pj9u2, Center for Open Science.
    15. Felix Holzmeister & Matthias Stefan, 2019. "The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?," Working Papers 2019-19, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    16. Bülow, Catharina Wolff von & Liu, Xiufeng, 2020. "Ready-made oTree applications for the study of climate change adaptation behavior," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    17. Bernedo Del Carpio, María & Alpizar, Francisco & Ferraro, Paul J., 2022. "Time and risk preferences of individuals, married couples and unrelated pairs," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    18. Liebenehm, S. & Waibel, H., 2014. "Risk and Time Preferences of West African Cattle Farmers," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 49, March.
    19. Tomáš Želinský, 2021. "Intertemporal Choices of Children and Adults from Poor Roma Communities: A Case Study from Slovakia," Eastern European Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(4), pages 378-405, July.
    20. Dorian Jullien, 2016. "Under Uncertainty, Over Time and Regarding Other People: Rationality in 3D," GREDEG Working Papers 2016-20, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    intertemporal decisions; time preferences; social preferences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    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:lui:cesare:1401. 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: Daniela Di Cagno (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deluiit.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.