Time Preferences and Food Choice

Abstract

Healthy food choices are a canonical example used to illustrate the importance of time preferences in behavioral economics.However, the literature lacks a direct demonstration that they are well-predicted by incentivized time preference measures.We offer direct evidence by combining a novel, two-question, incentivized time preference measurement with data from a field experiment that includes grocery purchases and consumption.Our present-focus measure is highly predictive of food choice, capturing a number of behaviors consistent with self-control problems, which provides direct evidence for the common assumption that important aspects of nutrition are driven by time preferences.

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