Poverty and Economic Decision-Making: Evidence from Changes in Financial Resources at Payday
通过随机安排低收入美国居民在发薪日前或后参与在线调查，研究财务资源变化对决策的影响，发现发薪日前个体在货币跨期选择中更显现时偏好，但非货币任务、风险承担、决策质量及认知功能无显著差异。
We study the effect of financial resources on decision-making. Low-income US households are randomly assigned to receive an online survey before or after payday. The survey collects measures of cognitive function and administers risk and intertemporal choice tasks. The study design generates variation in cash, checking and savings balances, and expenditures. Before-payday participants behave as if they are more present-biased when making intertemporal choices about monetary rewards but not when making intertemporal choices about nonmonetary real-effort tasks. Nor do we find before-after differences in risk-taking, the quality of decision-making, the performance in cognitive function tasks, or in heuristic judgments.