David Laibson, Samuel M. McClure, George Loewenstein, and Jonathan D. Cohen will be speaking this Thurs, 20 Jan, 2:30-4pm, at 404 IAB, on “Neuroeconomics and Impulsivity.” Their article is available here.

Their studies suggest that short-term and long-term rewards activate different areas of the brain. Personally, I think economists worry too much about intertemporal choice as a factor in decision making. I’ve been convinced by Dave Krantz that the idea of time discounting (for example, that an item now is equivalent in utility to 1.05 items to be delivered in a year) is not as universally applicable to decision analysis as seems generally assumed. I’ll get into this more another time.

In any case, the article looks interesting and I expect the talk will be interesting also.