Uncertainty is one explanation for why interest rates vary. Tolerance for uncertainty is called risk aversion, and it can be pretty complicated. (We’ll talk about it a little bit later on.) Another big concept is patience. Willingness to wait is also pretty complicated, but that’s our topic for today.
It’s easy to imagine some reasons that people would have different levels of patience. For one, you’d expect a healthy thirty-year-old (named Jim) to be more patient than a ninety-year-old (named Methuselah). What if someone (named Peter) offered us a choice between $100 today or a larger amount of money a year from now? How much would it take for Jim and Methuselah to take the delayed payoff? Would they take $100 a year from now? A lot can change in a year:
- There could be a whole bunch of inflation, and the $100 will be worth less next year than it is now. Boom, we’ve lost.
- We could put the money in the bank and earn a few basis points of interest. Boom, we’ve lost.
- We could die and not be able to pick up the money. Boom, we’ve lost.
- Peter could die and we wouldn’t be able to collect. Boom, we’ve lost.
Based on these, we’ll want a little bit more money next year than this year in order to be willing to take the money later instead of the money now. Statistically, though, Jim is more likely than Methuselah to be there to pick up the money.
Neither would take any less than $100 next year, but that’s just a lower limit. According to Bankrate.com, Discover Bank is paying 0.8% APY, which means that the $100 would be worth .8% more next year – just by putting the money in the bank, we can trade the risk that the bank goes bust (really unlikely) for the risk of Peter dying. That’s an improvement in risk and an improvement in payoff, so there’s no reason to take any less than $100.80. Again, though, this is a lower bound. Peter still has to pay for making them wait. That’s where the third point comes into play.
Methuselah is probably not going to live another year. It’s much more likely that he’ll get to spend the $100 than whatever he gets in a year; in order to make it worth the wait, the payoff would have to be huge. Methuselah views money later as worth a lot less than money today. He might need $200 to make it worth the wait. Jim, on the other hand, might only need $125. He has more time, so he’s much more patient.
This level of patience is called a discount rate and is usually called β. You can do this sort of experiment to figure out someone’s patience level. You’d then be able to set up an equation like this, where the benefit is the $100 and the cost is what you give up later:
Methuselah, then, would have
so β = 1/2.
Jim would have the following equation:
so β = 4/5.
Based on this, we can say that Methuselah values money one year from now at 50% of its current value, but Jim values money one year from now at 80% of its current value. Everyone’s discount rate is going to be a little bit different, and different discount rates can lead people to make different choices. If Peter offers $100 today or $150 tomorrow, Jim will wait patiently for $150. Methuselah will jump at the $100 today. Both of them are rational even though their choices are different.
