"What Eve did in the Garden of Eden was not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, but to swing on the
universal discount curve from delayed rewards, bending it permanently from a shape that had always generated
simple preferences to a shape that generates persistent motivational conflicts." --Picoeconomics, p. 85
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George Ainslie originally discovered hyperbolic discounting as an aspect of a broader empirical principle, Herrnstein's matching law. He has gone on to study the motivational implications of this discount curve variously for the strength, failure and freedom of will, and for the conventional view of involuntary behaviors and self-generated reward.
George Ainslie
151 Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Coatesville, PA 19320, USA
Email: info@picoeconomics.org
For George Ainslie's peronal biographical page click here.
