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Uncertainty about future payoffs makes impatience rational

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2017

James Holland Jones
James Holland Jones*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4216. [email protected]://profiles.stanford.edu/james-jones
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Abstract

Uncertainty (i.e., variable payoffs with unknown probabilities) brings together a number of features of the authors' argument. It leads to present bias, even for completely rational agents with time-consistent preferences. As an evolutionary product of Pleistocene climate instability, humans possess broad adaptations to environmental uncertainty, giving rise to key features of the behavioral constellation of deprivation (BCD).

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e330
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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