We review research that measures time preferences-i.e., preferences over intertemporal tradeoffs. We distinguish between studies using financial flows, which we call "money earlier or later" (MEL) decisions and studies that use time-dated consumption/effort. Under different structural models, we show how to translate what MEL experiments directly measure (required rates of return for financial flows) into a discount function over utils. We summarize empirical regularities found in MEL studies and the predictive power of those studies. We explain why MEL choices are driven in part by some factors that are distinct from underlying time preferences.

Using a novel database that tracks web traffic on the Security Exchange Commission's EDGAR server between 2004 and 2015, we show that institutional investors gather information on a very particular subset of firms and insiders, and their surveillance is very persistent over time. This tracking behavior has powerful implications for their portfolio choice and its information content. An institution that downloaded an insider trading filing by a given firm last quarter increases its likelihood of downloading an insider trading filing on the same firm by more than 41.3 percentage points this quarter. Moreover, the average tracked stock that an institution buys generates annualized alphas of over 12% relative to the purchase of an average non tracked stock. We find that institutional managers tend to track top executives and to share educational and locational commonalities with the specific insiders they choose to follow. Collectively, our results suggest that the information in tracked trades is important for fundamental firm value and is only revealed following the information-rich dual trading by insiders and linked institutions.