Beyond discounting: the tradeoff model of intertemporal choice

Research on intertemporal judgments and choices between a smaller-sooner and a larger-later outcome has revealed many anomalies to the discounted-utility model. Attempts to account for these anomalies within the discounting paradigm have resulted in convoluted and psychologically opaque models. We therefore develop a new model of intertemporal choice, the tradeoff model, in which choice results from a tradeoff between the perceived time difference (interval) and the perceived outcome difference (compensation). This model is both more parsimonious and more intuitive than any rival discounting model of comparable scope. Moreover, it accurately describes archival data as well as data from a new experiment.