A Theory of Natural Addiction


Autoria(s): Tasnádi, Attila; Smith, Trenton G.
Data(s)

2007

Resumo

Economic theories of rational addiction aim to describe consumer behavior in the presence of habit-forming goods. We provide a biological foundation for this body of work by formally specifying conditions under which it is optimal to form a habit. We demonstrate the empirical validity of our thesis with an in-depth review and synthesis of the biomedical literature concerning the action of opiates in the mammalian brain and their eects on behavior. Our results lend credence to many of the unconventional behavioral assumptions employed by theories of rational addiction, including adjacent complementarity and the importance of cues, attention, and self-control in determining the behavior of addicts. We oer evidence for the special case of the opiates that "harmful" addiction is the manifestation of a mismatch between behavioral algorithms encoded in the human genome and the expanded menu of choices faced by consumers in the modern world.

Formato

application/pdf

Identificador

http://unipub.lib.uni-corvinus.hu/213/1/Smith_Tasnadi_GEB_2007_v59_p316.pdf

Tasnádi, Attila and Smith, Trenton G. (2007) A Theory of Natural Addiction. Games and Economic Behavior, 59 (2). pp. 316-344.

Publicador

Elsevier

Relação

http://unipub.lib.uni-corvinus.hu/213/

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S089982560600100X

10.1016/j.geb.2006.08.006

Palavras-Chave #Social welfare, insurance, health care #Mathematics, Econometrics #Economics
Tipo

Article

PeerReviewed

Idioma(s)

en

en