Excerpt: Researchers have long been interested in understanding how people make decisions about behaviors that have long-term consequences for their well-being, like saving or smoking. These decisions require individuals to consider how they value costs and benefits that occur in the future versus those in the present- for example, saving requires sacrificing consumption today in order to have higher consumption in the future. Economic theory predicts that the discount rate - the rate at which individuals discount future costs and benefits - will be a critical factor in these decisions. Different people are likely to have different discount rates, since some people are more patient (low discount rate) while others are more impatient (high discount rate). Do individuals' discount rates help to explain their decisions about behaviors like saving and smoking? This question is examined in a new study, 'Individual Laboratory-Measured Discount Rates Predict Field Behaviors' (NBER Working Paper 14270)[.]  MORE >>