This paper tests whether self-control problems are relevant in real market settings. This is important because much of the empirical support for the self-control problem framework comes from laboratory experiments (see Fredrickson, Loewenstein and O’Donghue, 2004; Thaler, 1999). Departures from the standard model could disappear in real market settings, due to higher incentives, greater opportunities for learning, or differences between the population of subjects typically used in experiments and the general population (see List, 2003, for a discussion of these points). We use data on the timing of consumption between monthly paydays, for a large, representative sample of working households in the UK, to test whether the pay.
