Time Inconsistency

The prevalence of obesity among Black women has reached epidemic proportions. Some researchers have suggested that the body images of Black females may contribute to their high risk for obesity by inhibiting motivation for weight control. While a number of empirical studies have examined the body images of Black females, findings are complex and at times, inconsistent. For example, some studies show that Black females consider over-weight bodies more attractive, while other studies show that Black females prefer normal-weight bodies. Divergent findings may be due, in part, to the multidimensional nature of body image. Inconsistencies may also be due to differences between the Black females sampled. Methodological problems, including the use of measures that have not been validated among Black females, the use of various weight-for-height standards, and the inconsistent analyses of or lack of physiological data, also may contribute to conflicting results. This review addresses the complexity of body image findings among a heterogeneous Black female population and the relationship between their body images and obesity risk. Implications for effective obesity treatment programs and suggestions for improvements in future body image studies are also discussed.

This paper is dedicated at reconsidering objectives and instruments of monetary policy and also at redefining a policy mix in an economy which is systematically confronted to imbalances due to changes in technology, in the composition of demand or in the distribution of income, It is motivated by the policy failures as revealed both by the poor growth performances during the two last decades in Europe and by the difficulty of elaborating a strategy to way out from the on-going crisis. A critical assessment of DGSE models, which are the theoretical basis for the monetary policy currently carried out by central banks, is the starting point for reconsidering the nature of fluctuations and giving arguments in favour of an out-of-equilibrium approach. This approach focuses on the distortions in the structure of productive capacity induced by any structural change, and shows why and how the time inconsistency between the construction and the utilization phases of the production process ha...

ABSTRACT Although Kautilya does not provide any formal analysis, his approach contains almost all the ingredients of a game theory. He was certainly not aware of the numerous new jargons, such as sequential rationality, Bayes-Nash equilibrium, subgame perfection, backward induction, and forward induction, which have been added to the vocabulary during the past few decades to study strategic interactions. However, he clearly lays out an extensive form of a game and lists all the possible options available to a king on each node. He incorporates foresight, asymmetric information, and the possibility of ‘time inconsistency’ into his analysis of strategic interactions.

We study collective decisions by time-discounting individuals choosing a common consumption stream. We show that with any heterogeneity in time preferences, util- itarian aggregation necessitates a present bias. In lab experiments three quarters of ‘social planners’ exhibited present biases, and less than two percent were time consis- tent. Roughly a third of subjects acted as if they were pure utilitarians, and the rest chose as if they also had varying degrees of distributional concerns.

We introduce a new hybrid approach to joint estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for high quantiles of return distributions. We investigate the relative performance of VaR and ES models using daily returns for sixteen stock market indices (eight from developed and eight from emerging markets) prior to and during the 2008 financial crisis. In addition to widely used VaR and ES models, we also study the behavior of conditional and unconditional extreme value (EV) models to generate 99 percent confidence level estimates as well as developing a new loss function that relates tail losses to ES forecasts. Backtesting results show that only our proposed new hybrid and Extreme Value (EV)-based VaR models provide adequate protection in both developed and emerging markets, but that the hybrid approach does this at a significantly lower cost in capital reserves. In ES estimation the hybrid model yields the smallest error statistics surpassing even the EV models, especi...

This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives, and body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 2006 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we first show that greater impatience increases BMI and the likelihood of obesity even after controlling for demographic, human capital, occupational, and financial characteristics as well as risk preference. Next, we provide evidence of an

This Article maps financial crisis containment - extraordinary measures to stop the spread of financial distress - as a category of legal and policy choice. I make three claims. First, containment is distinct from financial regulation, crisis prevention and resolution. Containment is brief; it targets the immediate term. It involves claims of emergency, rule-breaking, time inconsistency and moral hazard. In contrast, regulation, prevention and resolution seek to establish sound incentives for the long term. Second, containment decisions deviate from non-crisis norms in predictable ways, and are consistent across diverse countries and crises. Containment invariably entails three kinds of choices: choices between wholesale and case-by-case response to financial distress, choices about whether to enforce private contracts and government regulations, and choices about distributing losses from crisis. I illustrate these with case studies from Indonesia in 1997-1998, Japan in 1994-1998, t...

We investigate long-run effects of state-owned public firms' leadership. We compare the case where the public firm produces before private firms (Stackelberg leader) to the case where all firms produce simultaneously (Cournot). We examine long-run effects by considering free-entry of private firms. We find that, as oppose to the short-run case, the public firm should not be the leader. This implies that a time inconsistency problem arises. We also investigate the possibility that the public firm is the follower and how privatiza- tion affects welfare.

Recent models of procrastination due to self-control problems assume that a procrastinator considers just one option and is unaware of her self-control problems. We develop a model where a person chooses from a menu of options and is partially aware of her self-control problems. This menu model replicates earlier results and generates new ones. A person might forgo completing an attractive option because she plans to complete a more attractive but never-to-be-completed option. Hence, providing a nonprocrastinator additional options can induce procrastination, and a person may procrastinate worse pursuing important goals than unimportant ones. © 2000 the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology