Pluralism and plurality in the research on the format of intertemporal discount functions.
This work seeks to illuminate the debate on the format of intertemporal discount functions from the perspective of Pluralism in Economics, a type of approach to Economic Methodology that studies the interaction between research areas that shared little with each other. In general, this approach seeks to suggest that different areas of economic research should actively interact with each other, going beyond the tolerance of divergences in their ideas. To this end, this debate will be described from the process of formation and development of Behavioral Economics, which emerged as an alternative interdisciplinary field between Psychology and Economic Science in the 20th century and which is inserted in the conventional economic view at the beginning of the century XXI the extent to which it has adapted its approach to the style of mainstream economics. The field of study on the format of timeless discount functions was part of this process, as the study of how they behave in choice hypotheses involving periods would be similar to investigations of anomalies, the main ideas of Behavioral Economics. Furthermore, this debate also brings new behavioral links to theoretical and empirical problems present in many fields of economic research. They are Neuroeconomics, Health Economics, Environmental Economics, Development Microeconomics, Macroeconomic Development and Finance. Given this, could the field of studies on the format of intertemporal discount functions be considered an example of the application of Pluralism in Economics? This approach will be investigated through a gathering of research methods of this approach to Economic Methodology. The written results indicate that, in order to see a pluralist perspective in this debate, it would be appropriate to center the methodological analysis on the part of this controversy regarding the rate they are obliged to use to discount the passage of time according to their levels of patience. This point would be a link between the issues debated between Behavioral Economics and the conventional economic view, which, in turn, could contribute to other areas of research being able to participate in this controversy.