English

Comparative Patience

Theoretical Economics 2024-07-03 v1

Abstract

We begin by formulating and characterizing a dominance criterion for prize sequences: xx dominates yy if any impatient agent prefers xx to yy. With this in hand, we define a notion of comparative patience. Alice is more patient than Bob if Alice's normalized discounted utility gain by going from any yy to any dominating xx is less than Bob's discounted utility gain from such an improvement. We provide a full characterization of this relation in terms of the agents' discount rules.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.02323,
  title  = {Comparative Patience},
  author = {Mark Whitmeyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.02323},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:26:41.244Z