Time is money - Time pressure, incentives, and the quality of decision-making

Many decisions in economics and finance have to be made under severe time pressure. Furthermore, payoffs frequently depend on the speed of decision-making, as, for instance, when buying and selling stocks. In this paper, we examine the influence of time pressure and time-dependent incentive schemes on the quality of decision-making in an experimental beauty-contest game. We find that convergence to equilibrium is faster and payoffs are higher under low time pressure than under high time pressure. Interestingly, time-dependent payoffs under high time pressure lead to significantly quicker decision-making without reducing the quality of decisions.

Keywords: Quality of decision-making; Time pressure; Incentives; Beauty-contest experiment

JEL classification codes: C72; C91