Revista de Economia Mackenzie (Jun 2008)
Economia e Psicologia na Explicação da Escolha Intertemporal
Abstract
This paper aims to present and analyze the reformist movement in economic modeling that serves to better predict patterns of choice over time. Based on a vast literature shedding light on the mutual gains of exchange between economists and psychologists, we argue that behavioral models that replace the constant (exponential) discounting with that of hyperbolic (nonconstant) time preference discounting contribute to a better understanding of various intertemporal choice anomalies and eventually pave the way for the explanatory (and predictive) progress of contemporary economic analysis.