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We study whether it’s possible to identify time-inconsistent preferences in empirical
designs where preferences are elicited in advance at time 0, and then again at time 1,
after the agent receives additional information. For single-peaked preferences, timeconsistency
is rejected only when the time-1 ranking between a pair of alternatives is
always the reverse of the time-0 ranking. We establish variations and generalizations
of this result. Since such stark reversals are rarely observed, choice-revision designs
require stronger identification assumptions than perhaps previously appreciated. But
we show that time-inconsistency is identifiable in environments where preferences over
alternatives can be “priced out.”
