• Graduate program
  • Research
  • News
  • Events
    • Summer School
      • Climate Change
      • Gender in Society
      • Inequalities in Health and Healthcare
      • Business Data Science Summer School Program
      • Receive updates
    • Events Calendar
    • Events Archive
    • Tinbergen Institute Lectures
    • Conference: Consumer Search and Markets
    • Annual Tinbergen Institute Conference
  • Summer School
    • Climate Change
    • Gender in Society
    • Inequalities in Health and Healthcare
    • Business Data Science Summer School Program
    • Receive updates
  • Alumni
  • Magazine
Home | Events Archive | Overcoming Time Inconsistency with a Matched Bet: Theory and Evidence from Exercising
Seminar

Overcoming Time Inconsistency with a Matched Bet: Theory and Evidence from Exercising


  • Series
    PhD Lunch Seminars
  • Speaker
    Andrej Woerner (University of Amsterdam)
  • Field
    Behavioral Economics
  • Location
    Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam, room 1.60
    Amsterdam
  • Date and time

    January 08, 2019
    12:00 - 13:00

This paper introduces the matched-bet mechanism. The matched bet is an easily applicable and strictly budget-balanced mechanism that aims to help people overcome time-inconsistent behavior. I show theoretically that offering a matched bet helps both sophisticated and naive procrastinators reduce time-inconsistent behavior. I conduct a field experiment to test the matched-bet mechanism in a natural area of application: exercising. My experimental results confirm the theoretical predictions: offering a matched bet has a significant positive effect on gym attendance. Self-reported procrastinators are significantly more likely to take up the matched bet. Overall, the matched bet proves a promising device to help people exercise more. I discuss how a matched bet could also be implemented in other areas such as academic performance, weight loss and smoking cessation.