Willpower and the optimal control of visceral urges
By: Emre Ozdenoren, Stephen Salant, Dan Silverman.
Contributors: Salant, Stephen W.; Silverman, Dan.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- no. 12278.; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 12278.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 40
Subjects: Self-control -- Economic aspects
Description: "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"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: "May 2006."

Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-40).

Also available in PDF from the NBER world wide web site (www.nber.org).