Bad Temptation

Abstract

We study a static self-control model in which an agent's preference, temptation ranking, and cost of self-control drive her choices among a finite set of options. We show that it is without loss to assume that the agent's temptation ranking is the opposite of her preference. We characterize the model by relaxing the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference (WARP), and exploit WARP violations to identify the model's parameters.