@misc{10481/78198,
year = {2020},
month = {9},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10481/78198},
abstract = {The use of hypothetical instead of real decision-making incentives remains under debate after
decades of economic experiments. Standard incentivized experiments involve substantial
monetary costs due to participants’ earnings and often logistic costs as well. In time
preferences experiments, which involve future payments, real payments are particularly
problematic. Since immediate rewards frequently have lower transaction costs than
delayed rewards in experimental tasks, among other issues, (quasi)hyperbolic functional
forms cannot be accurately estimated. What if hypothetical payments provide accurate data
which, moreover, avoid transaction cost problems? In this paper, we test whether the use
of hypothetical - versus real - payments affects the elicitation of short-term and long-term
discounting in a standard multiple price list task. One-out-of-ten participants probabilistic
payment schemes are also considered. We analyze data from three studies: a lab experiment
in Spain, a well-powered field experiment in Nigeria, and an online extension focused on
probabilistic payments. Our results indicate that paid and hypothetical time preferences are
mostly the same and, therefore, that hypothetical rewards are a good alternative to real
rewards. However, our data suggest that probabilistic payments are not.},
organization = {Spanish Government	PGC2018-093506-B-I00	
PGC2018-098186-B-I00	
PID2021-126892NB-I00},
organization = {Junta de Andalucia	PY18-FR-0007},
organization = {Comunidad de Madrid},
organization = {CAVTIONS-CM-UC3M (Comunidad de Madrid/Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)},
organization = {Athenea3i - Marie Skodowska-Curie (European Union's Horizon 2020/Universidad de Granada)	754446},
publisher = {Springer},
keywords = {Time preferences},
keywords = {Hypothetical vs real payoffs},
keywords = {Lab},
keywords = {Field},
keywords = {Online experiments},
keywords = {BRIS},
title = {Paid and hypothetical time preferences are the same: Lab, field and online evidence},
author = {Brañas Garza, Pablo and Espín Martín, Antonio Manuel},
}