Utility based models are common in both the risky and intertemporal
choice literatures. Recently there have been efforts to
formulate models of choices which involve both risks and
time delays. An important question then is whether the
concept of utility is the same for risky and inter-temporal
choices. We address this question by fitting versions of two
popular utility based models, Cumulative Prospect Theory for
risky choice, and Hyperbolic Discounting for inter-temporal
choice, to data from three experiments which involved both
choice types. The models were fit assuming either the same
concept of utility for both, by way of a common value
function, or different utilities with separate value functions.
Our results show that while many participants seem to require
the flexibility of different value functions, an approximately
equal number do not suggesting they may have a single
concept of utility. Furthermore for both choice types value
functions were concave