Time and decision: introduction to the special issue

This special issue showcases cutting-edge contributions to the ®eld of intertemporal choice, which refers to tradeo€s between costs and bene®ts occurring at di€erent points in time. Although intertemporal choice is a central aspect of decision theory and decision research Ð it is dicult to think of any important decision that lacks an intertemporal component Ð research on it emerged and ̄owered only in the last two decades. Until the 1980s, the discounted utility (DU) model, which was ®rst proposed by Samuelson in 1939 (see Loewenstein, 1992, for a historical discussion), was adopted uncritically by economists and decision theorists. Discounted Utility theory assumes that individuals discount future events at a constant rate, so that the value of an experience extended over time is given by: