Flexible Estimation of Groundwater Service Values and Time Preferences
利用地下水管理选择实验数据，估计了允许多峰偏好的随机折现率和地下水服务价值，发现时间偏好呈准双曲线形式，且折现率分布呈多峰特征。
Intertemporal choices depend on the time preference for discounting future costs and benefits. Allowing complex heterogeneity in time preferences can alter present value estimation of willingness to pay. Using data from a choice experiment about groundwater management, we estimate random discount rates and groundwater service values with flexible taste distributions allowing multimodal preferences. Flexible mixing distributions enable hyperbolic and quasi-hyperbolic discounting models to represent discounting heterogeneity so that some individuals can take on values approximating exponential discounting. Discounting most closely exhibits a quasi-hyperbolic form. Time preferences and groundwater service values are not normally distributed but, instead, multimodal. One group of individuals takes on discount rates approaching zero, another takes on rates around 40%, and a third group has rates larger than 80%. Accounting for attribute ignoring behavior leads to a smaller exponential discount rate but no difference in present bias. Accounting for perceived inconsequentiality does not lead to significantly different time preferences.