Endnote export
%T A note on the welfare of a sophisticated time-inconsistent decision-maker %A Kodritsch, Sebastian %P 21 %V SP II 2015-201 %D 2015 %~ WZB %X I examine the circumstances under which a sophisticated time-inconsistent decisionmaker (i) will not or (ii) need not severely miscoordinate her behavior across time, in the sense of following a course of action which fails to be Pareto-optimal for the sequence of temporal selves of the individual (Laibson [1994] and O'Donoghue and Rabin [1999] provide prominent instances of such miscoordination). Studying the standard solution concept for this case -Strotz-Pollak equilibrium- in general decision problems with perfect information, I establish two results: first, for finite-horizon problems without indifference, essential consistency (Hammond [1976]) is sufficient for choice to be Pareto-optimal. Second, if the decision problem satisfies a certain history-independence property, whenever an equilibrium outcome fails to be Pareto-optimal, it is Pareto-dominated by another equilibrium outcome, leading to an existence result for a Pareto-optimal solution. (author's abstract) %C DEU %C Berlin %G en %9 Arbeitspapier %W GESIS - http://www.gesis.org %~ SSOAR - http://www.ssoar.info