Important note: This is a hybrid event and will also require a password to access the online seminar. Please email the event organiser – Dave Mc Manamon (dave.mcmanamon@sydney.edu.au) for access.

The School of Economics invites you to an Economic Theory seminar by Mengke Wang (University of Sydney).

Decision Making under Time Pressure

Abstract

This paper studies individual decision making when deadlines are random. Since the quality of any decision relies on information and it takes time to gather information, a decision maker should have a preference over deadlines as well as over menus. Past research studies rationally inattentive decision making without deadlines. It is established that a decision maker’s informational constraint is revealed by her distaste for contingent planning. This paper extends the analysis to random deadlines and establishes the relationship between a decision maker’s preference over timed choice problems and the set of information acquisition paths she has available. It is demonstrated that if a decision maker’s preference over random deadlines satisfies the von Neumann-Morgenstern independence axiom, then it is as if the decision maker’s optimal way to acquire information depends only on the menu she is presented with and is independent of the deadline. Moreover, if no information is lost along any path then the decision maker’s distaste for contingent planning becomes weaker as she is allowed more time to decide.