Essays in Procrastination, Commitment and Fairness

This book consists of behavioral and experimental work on self-control problems, as well as effects of reputation on fairness considerations. Chapter 1 presents a theoretical model of task performance behavior where people have time-inconsistent preferences. The main premise is that the likelihood to procrastinate and to take measures to prevent procrastination might change as individuals join groups. We argue that group membership, due to its payoff structures and social pressures, might be conceived as a commitment device both for those who are aware of their problem and for those who are not. Chapter 2 is an experiment that tests a question suggested in Chapter 1: Do people's procrastination behavior change in groups? If people rely on costly devices to counteract self-control problems, do groups mitigate or exacerbate this reliance? Why are commitment devices underutilized? The third chapter takes on another behavioral topic and shows that past behavior might affect people's fairness judgments. Including information of past play, we analyze rejection rates in ultimatum games and we observe that reputation matters.