IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/555.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Discounting, Patience, and Dynamic Decision Making

Author

Listed:
  • John Quah
  • Bruno Strulovici

Abstract

Whether they are financial, economic, or psychological, discount rates affect most economic decisions: investment and savings, hirings and firings, defaults and refinancing, financial and economic reforms, learning and experimentation, and any other decision with long-term consequences, such as gas emissions control. This paper studies these questions in a unified framework, providing general insights and results showing how discounting affects i) the expected utility of an agent, ii) the timing and the magnitude of his decisions, and iii) the path of underlying state variables controlled by the agent. The analysis includes the case of a time-inconsistent agent and of stochastic discounting.

Suggested Citation

  • John Quah & Bruno Strulovici, 2011. "Discounting, Patience, and Dynamic Decision Making," Economics Series Working Papers 555, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:555
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:30d67065-3042-451e-bcb8-0276544fe50d
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David, 1998. "Learning in games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 631-639, May.
    2. John K.-H. Quah & Bruno Strulovici, 2009. "Comparative Statics, Informativeness, and the Interval Dominance Order," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(6), pages 1949-1992, November.
    3. Matthew Rabin & Ted O'Donoghue, 1999. "Doing It Now or Later," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 103-124, March.
    4. Arrow, Kenneth J & Levhari, David, 1969. "Uniqueness of the Internal Rate of Return with Variable Life of Investment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 79(315), pages 560-566, September.
    5. Leland, Hayne E, 1994. "Corporate Debt Value, Bond Covenants, and Optimal Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1213-1252, September.
    6. Dixit, Avinash K, 1989. "Entry and Exit Decisions under Uncertainty," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 620-638, June.
    7. Drazen Prelec, 2004. "Decreasing Impatience: A Criterion for Non‐stationary Time Preference and “Hyperbolic” Discounting," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 106(3), pages 511-532, October.
    8. 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.
    9. Milgrom, Paul & Shannon, Chris, 1994. "Monotone Comparative Statics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(1), pages 157-180, January.
    10. Sen, Amartya, 1975. "Minimal conditions for monotonicity of capital value," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 340-355, December.
    11. Paul Milgrom & Ilya Segal, 2002. "Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 583-601, March.
    12. Godfrey Keller & Sven Rady & Martin Cripps, 2005. "Strategic Experimentation with Exponential Bandits," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 39-68, January.
    13. James E. Foster & Tapan Mitra, 2003. "Ranking investment projects," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 22(3), pages 469-494, October.
    14. Flemming, J S & Wright, J F, 1971. "Uniqueness of the Internal Rate of Return: A Generalisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 81(322), pages 256-263, June.
    15. Bruno Strulovici, 2010. "Learning While Voting: Determinants of Collective Experimentation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(3), pages 933-971, May.
    16. Martin L. Weitzman, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 703-724, September.
    17. R. H. Strotz, 1955. "Myopia and Inconsistency in Dynamic Utility Maximization," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 23(3), pages 165-180.
    18. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, January.
    19. Patrick Bolton & Christopher Harris, 1999. "Strategic Experimentation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(2), pages 349-374, March.
    20. Ross, Stephen A. & Spatt, Chester S. & Dybvig, Philip H., 1980. "Present values and internal rates of return," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 66-81, August.
    21. Gustavo Manso & Bruno Strulovici & Alexei Tchistyi, 2010. "Performance-Sensitive Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 1819-1854.
    22. Drew Fudenberg & David K. Levine, 1998. "The Theory of Learning in Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061945, December.
    23. Nachman, David C., 1975. "Risk aversion, impatience, and optimal timing decisions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 196-246, October.
    24. William D. Nordhaus, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 686-702, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items 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. John K. -H Quah & Bruno Strulovici, 2009. "Discounting and Patience in Optimal Stopping and Control Problems," Discussion Papers 1480, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    2. Strulovici, Bruno & Szydlowski, Martin, 2015. "On the smoothness of value functions and the existence of optimal strategies in diffusion models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 1016-1055.
    3. Strulovici, Bruno & Szydlowski, Martin, 2012. "On the Smoothness of Value Functions," MPRA Paper 36326, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 31 Jan 2012.
    4. Magni, Carlo Alberto, 2016. "Capital depreciation and the underdetermination of rate of return: A unifying perspective," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 54-79.
    5. Drouhin, Nicolas, 2020. "Non-stationary additive utility and time consistency," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-14.
    6. 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.
    7. Geoffrey Heal & Antony Millner, 2013. "Discounting under disagreement," GRI Working Papers 112, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    8. Antony Millner & Geoffrey Heal, 2015. "Collective intertemporal choice: time consistency vs. time invariance," GRI Working Papers 220, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    9. Lawrence Summers & Richard Zeckhauser, 2008. "Policymaking for posterity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 115-140, December.
    10. Reyer Gerlagh, 2012. "Carbon Prices for the Next Thousand Years," Review of Environment, Energy and Economics - Re3, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, August.
    11. Nesje, Frikk, 2024. "Cross-dynastic intergenerational altruism," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    12. Karp, Larry & Tsur, Yacov, 2011. "Time perspective and climate change policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-14, July.
    13. David K. Levine & Drew Fudenberg, 2006. "A Dual-Self Model of Impulse Control," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1449-1476, December.
    14. Chen, Chia-Hui & Ishida, Junichiro, 2018. "Hierarchical experimentation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 365-404.
    15. Thomas A. Weber, 2017. "Optimal switching between cash-flow streams," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 86(3), pages 567-600, December.
    16. Wojciech Rybicki, 2012. "Discounting and ideas of intergenerational equity and sustainability," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 22(1), pages 63-84.
    17. Boyarchenko, Svetlana & Levendorskii, Sergei, 2010. "Discounting when income is stochastic and climate change policies," MPRA Paper 27998, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Ebert, Sebastian & Wei, Wei & Zhou, Xun Yu, 2020. "Weighted discounting—On group diversity, time-inconsistency, and consequences for investment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    19. Antony Millner, 2016. "Heterogeneous intergenerational altruism," GRI Working Papers 226, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    20. Mikhail Pakhnin, 2021. "Collective Choice with Heterogeneous Time Preferences," CESifo Working Paper Series 9141, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Capital growth; Comparative statics; Discounting; Internal rate of return; Optimal control; Optimal stopping; Patience; Presence value; Project Valuation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies

    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:oxf:wpaper:555. 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: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.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.