Doing It When Others Do: A Strategic Model of Procrastination

This paper develops a strategic model of procrastination in which present‐biased agents prefer to perform an onerous task with someone else. This turns their decision of when to perform the task into a procrastination game —a dynamic coordination game between present‐biased players. The model characterizes the conditions under which interaction mitigates or exacerbates procrastination. A procrastinator matched with a worse procrastinator may perform her task earlier than she otherwise would: she wants to avoid the increased temptation that her peer's company would generate. Procrastinators can thus use bad company as a commitment device to mitigate their self‐control problem. ( JEL C72, C73, D03, D91)