Lingguo (Lin) Xu

This paper examines anticipatory utility and its impact on delayed consumption. Conventional economic models typically assume that utility is experienced only at the moment of consumption, but certain experiences can evoke strong anticipatory feelings that shape utility well before the event occurs. Using a laboratory experiment, we investigate how exogenously imposed delays influence individuals' valuation of a "utility event" and whether utility derived from anticipation moderates this effect. Participants engage in a gold mining game, waiting for a gold nugget to be revealed, and are randomly assigned to either a delay or no-delay treatment. Anticipation is measured primarily through participants' willingness to pay for early information, with additional measures — the frequency of checking the mining status and self-reported excitement levels — as robustness checks. The results show that delays generally reduce the valuation of the gold nugget, but this effect is concentrated among low-anticipation individuals. High-anticipation participants exhibit little to no change in valuation, suggesting that anticipatory utility buffers against the negative effects of delays.

Self-assessment is important for decision making in education and career choice. An important source of information in self-assessment is social comparison. While some individuals may use this type of information to learn about their comparative advantage and set goals for the future, others may avoid any such information altogether to preserve their ego and self-esteem. In this paper, we evaluate whether men and women differ in their demand for social comparison information in two different environments — where such information may either have or not have instrumental value. When comparative information is non-instrumental, we find that women, especially those who believe themselves to be average performers, avoid upward comparative information. In contrast, when faced with the prospect of doing the task again, women are more likely to seek upward comparative information than men, driven by those who believe themselves to be average performers.