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Intertemporal Decision Making Studies on the working of myopia Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Intertemporal Decision Making Studies on the working of myopia Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Psychologische, Pedagogische en Sociologische Wetenschappen aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. D.F.J. Boscher, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 25 april 2002 om 16.00 uur door Alexander Ludwig Wolfgang Gattig geboren op 23 october 1969 te Bremen, Duitsland Promotores: Prof. Siegwart Lindenberg Prof. Jacques Siegers Prof. Charles Vlek Manuscript Committee: Prof. George Loewenstein (Pittsburgh) Prof. Tom Snijders (Groningen) Prof. Frans van Winden (Amsterdam) ISBN: 90 5170 603 0 Acknowledgements This book summarizes research carried out when I was a Ph.D. student at the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS) in Groningen. Though it has been written by a single author many people contributed to its completion and here I want to express my gratitude to them. First, I would like to thank my supervisors for the time and effort they took to improve this book but also for their patience and for the freedom they gave me to pursue research topics that I was interested in. Instead of beginning each chapter with the acknowledgement that their comments improved the quality of the text I would like to thank them here in the preface for their support. More specifically, I would like to thank Sigi Lindenberg for the numerous stimulating discussions with respect to theoretical issues. Further, he had a big impact on the structuring of the whole text. Jacques Siegers' quick and precise comments improved the accessibility of the text a lot. Although Charles Vlek was not involved in the initial stages of this project his impact on this book was profound. Not only are Chapters 6 and 7 results of our joint efforts, but his extensive and thorough comments on the other parts of the book made the text much more clear and substantially improved the reasoning. I also would like to thank the members of the Dissertation Committee for taking their time to read this thesis and for allowing me to defend it. Further, I would like to thank George Loewenstein, Drazen Prelec, Matthew Rabin, and Itamar Simonson for the time they took during my stay at Stanford to discuss several ideas concerning my Ph.D. thesis. Some others helped to improve this book. Maarten Reinink's support in designing the experiment reported in Chapter 7 and his help to collect the data for it were invaluable. Laurie Hendrickx provided competent comments on several parts of the manuscript. Jeroen Weesie helped to design the questionnaire used for Chapter 5 and he also improved the reasoning in this Chapter. However, the stimulating conversations with him also influenced many other parts of this book. I would like to thank all three of them not only for their help but also for the friendly atmosphere in which our conversations took place. I benefited a lot from my fellow Ph.D. students (past and present) at the ICS. Thus, instead of trying to single out individuals who contributed to the completion of this book (and forgetting others) I would like to thank them collectively not only for their professional support but also for sharing other activities with me than work, e.g., soccer, chess, or board games in general. Finally, though their contribution to this book was only indirect, I would like to thank my family for their support and patience. Contents: Intertemporal Decision Making Chapter 1: Intertemporal choices 1. Introduction: intertemporal choices 1.1. The practical importance of intertemporal choices 1.2. The importance of intertemporal choices for rational choice theory 1.3. The Discounted-Utility model 1.4. Anom