Publications
Publications
- 2021
Intertemporal Altruism
By: Thomas Graeber, Felix Chopra, Philipp Eisenhauer and Armin Falk
Abstract
Standard consumption utility is linked in time to a consumption event, whereas the timing of prosocial utility flows is ambiguous. Prosocial utility may depend on the actual utility consequences for others – it is consequence-dated – or it may be related to the act of giving and is thus choice-dated. Even though most prosocial decisions involve intertemporal trade-offs, existing models of other-regarding preferences abstract from the time signature of utility flows, limiting their explanatory scope. Building on a canonical intertemporal choice framework, we characterize the behavioral implications of the time structure of prosocial utility. We conduct a high-stakes donation experiment that allows us to identify non-parametrically and calibrate structurally the different motives from their unique time profiles. We find that the universe of our choice data can only be explained by a combination of choice- and consequence-dated prosocial utility. Both motives are pervasive and negatively correlated at the individual level.
Keywords
Citation
Graeber, Thomas, Felix Chopra, Philipp Eisenhauer, and Armin Falk. "Intertemporal Altruism." Working Paper, September 2021. (R&R at American Economic Journal Microeconomics.)