Arbeitspapier

Procrastination and learning about self-control

We study a model of task completion with the opportunity to learn about own self-control problems over time. While the agent is initially uncertain about her future self-control, in each period she can choose to learn about it by paying a non-negative learning cost and spending one period. If the agent has time-consistent preferences, she always chooses to learn whenever the learning is beneficial. If the agent has time-inconsistent preferences, however, she may procrastinate such a learning opportunity. Further, if her time preferences exhibit inter-temporal conflicts between future selves (e.g., hyperbolic discounting), the procrastination of learning can occur even when the learning cost is zero. The procrastination also leads to a non-completion of the task. When the agent has multiple initially-uncertain attributes (e.g., own future self-control and own ability for the task), the agent's endogenous learning decisions may be misdirected - she chooses to learn what she should not learn from her initial perspective, and she chooses not to learn what she should.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Discussion Paper ; No. 192

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Game Theory and Bargaining Theory: General
Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: General‡
Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡
Thema
procrastination
self-control
naivete
hyperbolic discounting
misdirected learning

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Christensen, Else Gry Bro
Murooka, Takeshi
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition
(wo)
München und Berlin
(wann)
2019

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:46 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Christensen, Else Gry Bro
  • Murooka, Takeshi
  • Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition

Entstanden

  • 2019

Ähnliche Objekte (12)