TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ozdenoren,Emre
AU  - Salant,Stephen
AU  - Silverman,Dan
TI  - Willpower and the Optimal Control of Visceral Urges
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12278
PY  - 2006
Y2  - June 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12278
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12278.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Emre Ozdenoren
Department of Economics
London Business School 
Regent's Park
London NW
E-Mail: eozdenoren@london.edu

Stephen Salant
University of Michigan
Department of Economics
611 Tappan
254 Lorch Hall
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220
Tel: 734 223 7439
E-Mail: ssalant@umich.edu

Dan Silverman
Department of Economics
W.P. Carey School of Business
Arizona State University
P.O. Box 879801
Tempe, AZ 85287-9801
Tel: 480-965-4832
Fax: 480-965-3531
E-Mail: dsilver3@asu.edu
AB  - Common intuition and experimental psychology suggest that the ability to self-regulate, willpower, is a depletable resource. We investigate the behavior of an agent who optimally consumes a cake (or paycheck or workload) over time and who recognizes that restraining his consumption too much would exhaust his willpower and leave him unable to manage his consumption. Unlike prior models of self-control, a model with willpower depletion can explain the increasing consumption sequences observable in high frequency data (and corresponding laboratory findings), the apparent links between unrelated self-control behaviors, and the altered economic behavior following imposition of cognitive loads. At the same time, willpower depletion provides an alternative explanation for a taste for commitment, intertemporal preference reversals, and procrastination. Accounting for willpower depletion thus provides a more unified theory of time preference. It also provides an explanation for anomalous intratemporal behaviors such as low correlations between health-related activities.
ER  -