This seems like an obvious question but one I had never thought of before: does time discounting vary with age? If yes, could this explain time inconsistent behaviour and can we see any neural correlates of this? Introspection suggests that one discounts more as one ages. After all, why put off to tomorrow when it is increasingly likely that there will not be a tomorrow or, as Dylan Thomas put it, "Do not go gently into that good night"?
For some evidence: Time discounting over the lifespan, D Read & N.L. Read. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Volume 94, Issue 1, May 2004, Pages 22-32
there are a few other papers, some of which are referenced in the paper orla and i have been working on
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