TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chabris,Christopher F.
AU  - Laibson,David
AU  - Morris,Carrie L.
AU  - Schuldt,Jonathon P.
AU  - Taubinsky,Dmitry
TI  - Individual Laboratory-Measured Discount Rates Predict Field Behavior
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14270
PY  - 2008
Y2  - August 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14270
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14270.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Christopher F.. Chabris
Union College
807 Union Street
Schenectady, NY 12308
E-Mail: chabrisc@union.edu

David Laibson
Department of Economics
Littauer M-12
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-3402
Fax: 617/495-8570
E-Mail: dlaibson@gmail.com

Carrie L. Morris
Washington University School of Medicine
Campus Box 8505
4444 Forest Park Avenue
Campus Box
St. Louis, MO 63108
E-Mail: clmorris@post.harvard.edu

Jonathon P. Schuldt
Department of Psychology
University of Michigan
3232 East Hall
530 Church St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
E-Mail: jschuldt@umich.edu

Dmitry Taubinsky
E-Mail: taubinsk@fas.harvard.edu
AB  - We estimate discount rates of 555 subjects using a laboratory task and find that these individual discount rates predict inter-individual variation in field behaviors (e.g., exercise, BMI, smoking). The correlation between the discount rate and each field behavior is small: none exceeds 0.28 and many are near 0. However, the discount rate has at least as much predictive power as any variable in our dataset (e.g., sex, age, education). The correlation between the discount rate and field behavior rises when field behaviors are aggregated: these correlations range from 0.09-0.38. We present a model that explains why specific intertemporal choice behaviors are only weakly correlated with discount rates, even though discount rates robustly predict aggregates of intertemporal decisions.
ER  -