@inproceedings{gravin2016procrastination,
author = {Gravin, Nick and Immorlica, Nicole and Lucier, Brendan and Pountourakis, Emmanouil},
title = {Procrastination with Variable Present Bias},
booktitle = {17th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC 2016)},
year = {2016},
month = {June},
abstract = {Individuals working towards a goal often exhibit time inconsistent behavior, making plans and then failing to follow through. One well-known model of such behavioral anomalies is present-bias discounting: individuals over-weight present costs by a bias factor. This model explains many time-inconsistent behaviors, but can make stark predictions in many settings: individuals either follow the most efficient plan for reaching their goal or procrastinate indefinitely.

We propose a modification in which the present-bias parameter can vary over time, drawn independently each step from a fixed distribution. Following Kleinberg and Oren (2014), we use a weighted task graph to model task planning, and measure the cost of procrastination as the relative expected cost of the chosen path versus the optimal path. We use a novel connection to optimal pricing theory to describe the structure   of the worst-case task graph for any present-bias distribution. We then leverage this structure to derive conditions on the bias distribution under which the worst-case ratio is exponential (in time) or constant. We also examine conditions on the task graph that lead to improved procrastination ratios: graphs with a uniformly bounded distance to the goal, and graphs in which the distance to the goal monotonically decreases on any path.},
url = {http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/research/publication/procrastination-variable-present-bias/},
edition = {17th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC 2016)},
}