Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: Luckman et al. (2018) tested experimentally the conjecture that a single model of risky intertemporal choice can account for both risky choices and intertemporal choices and found, under the conditions of their experiment, evidence in support of it. Given the existing literature, that is a remarkable result which warrants (conceptual) replication. A key reason to be skeptical about the result is that Luckman et al. (2018), following a well-established tradition in psychology, employed first-year psychology students that participated for course credit. Proper incentivization is a long-standing bone of contention among experimentally working economists and psychologists and it is widely accepted among economists (and even many psychologists) that the elicitation of risk preferences and time preferences is very much a function of the way you incentivize the choices. Another important reason to be skeptical about the result (which interacts with the first) is that the experiment was not properly powered up; hence the no-difference results reported by the authors might be spurious.