Conventional wisdom once held that the demand for addictive substances like cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs was unlike that for any other economic good and, therefore, unresponsive to traditional market forces. Recently, however, researchers from two disparate fields, economics and behavioral...

Polydrug abuse is common among substance abusers, but few empirical or theoretical methods accurately characterize this phenomenon. This chapter describes a simulation paradigm that was developed to apply a behavioral economic analysis to understanding polydrug abuse. Heroin abusers 'purchased'...

Evidence that economic principles may be employed to predict the rates at which cigarettes are consumed is presented from several laboratory experiments. In these experiments, cigarette-deprived smokers were required to make a effortful response to earn cigarette puffs. Changing the number of...

Conceptual paper purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine a new conceptual model of addiction and interpret the results from delay discounting studies in light of this new perspective. Methodology/approach – To accomplish this we (1) introduce this new conceptual model, (2)...