Impatient Consumers

Abstract: Many consumers suffer from present bias. To present-biased consumers, the long term is a foreign country, and they are not sure they will ever visit. If consumers suffer from present bias, there is room to rethink national policies in multiple domains. Regulatory mandates might turn out to be better than economic incentives. Fuel economy and energy efficiency mandates might produce billions of dollars in annual savings to present-biased consumers. The net benefits of mandates that simultaneously reduce internalities and externalities might exceed the net benefits of incentives that reduce externalities alone, even if mandates turn out to be a highly inefficient way of reducing externalities.