Dynamic decision making: what do people do?

Potentially dynamically-inconsistent individuals create particular problems for economics, as their behaviour depends upon whether and how they attempt to resolve their potential inconsistency. This paper reports on the results of a new experiment designed to help us distinguish between the different types that may exist. We classify people into four types: myopic, na < ve, resolute and sophisticated. We implement a new and simple experimental design in which subjects are asked to take two sequential decisions (interspersed by a random move by Nature) concerning the allocation of a given sum of money. The resulting data enables us to classify the subjects. We find that the majority are resolute, a significant few are sophisticated, rather few are na < ve and similarly few are myopic.