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DR@W Forum - John Stovall (Department of Economics, University of 糖心TV)
John Stovall (Department of Economics, University of 糖心TV)
Temptation with Uncertain Normative Preferences
We model a decision maker who anticipates being affected by temptation but is also uncertain about what is normatively best. Formally, our model is a three-period version of Gul and Pesendorfer’s (2001) where in the ex-ante period the agent chooses a set of menus, in the interim period he chooses a menu from this set, and in the final period he chooses from the menu. Our main axiom on preference states that the agent prefers to have the option to commit in the interim period. Our representation is a generalization of Dekel, Lipman, and Rustichini’s (2009) and identifies the agent's different normative preferences as well as the different temptations which correspond to each normative preference. We also characterize the uncertain normative preference analog to Stovall’s (2010) representation. Finally, we characterize the special case where normative preference is not uncertain. This special case allows us to uniquely identify the representations of Dekel, Lipman, and Rustichini (2009) and Stovall (2010).