Kaur, Supreet., Michael Kremer, and Sendhil Mullainathan, (2015). "Self-control at work," Journal of Political Economy, 123(6): 1227-1277.
Self-control problems change the logic of agency theory by partly aligning the interests of the firm and worker: both now value contracts that elicit future effort. Findings from a year-long field experiment with full-time data entry workers support this idea. Findings suggest that workplace features such as high-powered incentives or effort monitoring may provide self-control benefits.
Augenblick, Ned, Muriel Niederle and Charles Sprenger. Working Over Time: Dynamic Inconsistency in Real Effort Tasks The Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2015
Laboratory evidence of present bias, and of (some) sophistication among present-biased people.
Haushofer, Johannes, (2015). “The cost of keeping track,” unpublished paper, Princeton University.
Shows that a lump-sum cost of keeping track of future transactions predicts several known departures from the standard discounting model. Agents of this type “pre-crastinate” on losses and are willing to pay for reminders.
Imas Alex., Sally Sadoff, and Anya Samek, (2016). “Do People Anticipate Loss Aversion?” Management Science, Vol 63, No. 5.
Standard theory (without time inconsistency in effort) says loss-framed contracts will raise effort but people will avoid them because the chance of a loss reduces utility. But the authors find the opposite: people prefer the loss-framed contracts, perhaps because they help people combat procrastination.
Frakes, Michael D, and Melisa F. Wasserman, (2017). “Procrastination in the Workplace: Evidence from the U.S. Patent Office,” NBER working paper no: 22987.
Taking advantage of the natural experiment afforded by the Patent Office’s staggered implementation of its telecommuting program, estimates an immediate spike in application end-loading and other indicia of procrastination upon the onset of telecommuting.
Bai Liang., Benjamin Handel, Edward Miguel and Gautam Rao, (2018). “Self-Control and Demand for Preventive Health: Evidence from Hypertension in India,” NBER working paper no: 23727.
Conducts a field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of theoretically-motivated commitment contracts in increasing preventive doctor visits by hypertensive patients in rural India. Shows that a substantial number of individuals pay for commitments, but then fail to follow through on the specified task, losing money without experiencing any health benefit.
Ericson, Keith Marzilli, and David Laibson, (2018). “Intertemporal choice,” No. w25358. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Describes models of intertemporal choice, identifies empirical regularities in choice, and pose new questions for research. Introduces the term “present-focused preferences” to describe the large class of models that prioritize present flows of experienced utility. Present-bias is a special case of present-focused preferences.
Breig, Zachary, Matthew Gibson and Jeffrey G. Shrader (2020) Why Do We Procrastinate? Present Bias and Optimism IZA discussion paper no. 13060
While procrastination is typically modeled as resulting from present bias, we consider an alternative explanation: excessively optimistic beliefs about future demands on an individual's time. The explanations can be distinguished by how individuals respond to information on their past choices. Experimental results rule out present bias as the only cause of dynamic inconsistency, and they are consistent with optimism. These findings might explain the relatively low demand for commitment devices, and suggest that giving people information on their own past choices might mitigate procrastination.
Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus, Holger Gerhardt, Gerhardt Riener, Frederik Schwerter, Frederik and Louis Strang. Concentration Bias in Intertemporal Choice CESifo Working Paper No. 9011, April 2021
The authors identify a previously unrecognized form of bias in intertemporal choice: concentration bias. Specifically, subjects over-value high rewards that are present for short periods of time, relative to low costs that are spread over longer periods of time. As a result, they agree to perform overtime work over a large number of days in return for brief, higher rewards that do not warrant this much effort according to standard discounting models.
Goerg, S.J, (2015). “Goal setting and worker motivation,” IZA World of Labor 2015 number 178.
Goals are powerful motivators for workers, with the potential for boosting productivity in an organization. However, if not chosen carefully or if used in unsuitable situations, goals can have undesired and harmful consequences. Goals are a powerful tool that needs to be applied with caution.
Brookins, Philip., Sebastian J. Goerg, and Sebastian Kube, (2017). “Self-chosen goals, incentives, and effort,” UC Berkeley.
Experimentally investigates the interplay between self- chosen work goals and monetary incentives, and its effects on work performance. Results show that that the use of personal work goals leads to a significant output increase even without performance-contingent monetary incentives, but the impact depends on the exact size of the goals and the difficulty of the task.
Clark, Damon., David Gill, Victoria Prowse, and Mark Rush, (2017). "Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence From Field Experiments," Review of Economics and Statistics, vol 102(4), pages 648-663.
Reports the results of two field experiments that involved almost four thousand college students: one experiment asked treated students to set goals for performance in the course; the other asked treated students to set goals for a particular task. Task-based goals had large and robust positive effects on the level of task completion, and also increased course performance.
Dobronyi, Christopher R., Philip Oreopoulos, and Uros Petronijevic, (2017). “Goal Setting, Academic Reminders, and College Success: A Large-Scale Field Experiment,” NBER working paper no: 23738.
Presents an independent large-scale experimental evaluation of two online goal-setting intervention on approximately 1,400 first-year undergraduate students at a large Canadian university. No evidence suggests an effect on GPA, course credits, or second year persistence.
Scheiber, Noam, (2017). “How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons,” New York Times, April 2.
Employing hundreds of social scientists and data scientists, Uber has experimented with video game techniques, graphics and noncash rewards of little value that can prod drivers into working longer and harder — and sometimes at hours and locations that are less lucrative for them.
Altmann, Steffen Christian Traxler, and Philipp Weinschenk 2021 Deadlines and Memory Limitations Management Science, Vol. 68, No. 9: 6733-6750.
While procrastination can be explained by present-biased preferences, another possible explanation is limited memory: agents may simply forget to do what is needed to complete a task. In two natural field experiments at a dental clinic, the authors evaluate deadlines and the rewards attached to them as possible solutions to this problem. Deadlines are highly effective at inducing patients to schedule appointments, even when they are not tied to explicit rewards. Thus, memory and attention issues can play significant roles in causing procrastination, and deadlines can be a powerful management tool to encourage timely task completion.
Aggarwal, Shilpa, Rebecca Dizon-Ross and Ariel D. Zucker 2020 “Incentivizing Behavioral Change: The Role of Time Preferences” NBER working paper no 27079
The authors propose an alternative to commitment contracts for motivating impatient agents. This alternative, called time-bundling makes the payment for future effort increase in current effort. For example, the worker could be paid only if they achieve a performance target both today and tomorrow. Impatient agents accept such contracts because they strongly discount future effort, and honor them because the marginal reward to effort in both periods is higher than in a linear contract. Time-bundled contracts improved health among diabetics by raising the number of steps walked per day.
Islam, Asadul, Sungoh Kwon, Eema Masood, Nishith Prakash, Shwetlena Sabarwal and Deepak Saraswat (2020) When Goal-Setting Forges Ahead but Stops Short IZA discussion paper no. 13188
In a large-scale social experiment, the authors find that goal-setting has a significant positive impact on student time use, study effort, and self-discipline, but no impact on test scores. In part, this is because about 2/3rd of students do not set realistic goals.
Heffetz, Ori, Ted O'Donoghue and Henry S. Schneider 2022 Reminders Work, but for Whom? Evidence from New York City Parking Ticket Recipients American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2022, 14(4): 343–370
The authors study the effectiveness of reminder letters to New York City parking ticket recipients. While the letters ‘worked’, they mostly worked for recipients who were most likely to pay anyway. Those who were initially least likely to pay –who disproportionately come from disadvantaged groups-- reacted the least to letters. This group did, however, react strongly to traditional, incentive-based interventions. Thus, light-touch interventions like reminders can be effective may not work for all agents.