Wk. Bickel et al., BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS - A NOVEL EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF DRUG-DEPENDENCE, Drug and alcohol dependence, 33(2), 1993, pp. 173-192
Drug abuse and dependence are among the most important problems facing
society today. Understanding the determinants of drug abuse has been
advanced by a considerable quantity of research on environmental and p
harmacological factors that control drug taking in a variety of settin
gs and species. Behavioral economics, which is the application of econ
omic principles to the behavior of the individual, may have the potent
ial to integrate a number of these empirical observations in a novel q
uantitative framework. In this paper the utility of behavioral economi
cs for the study of drug dependence is reviewed. Specifically, we revi
ewed (i) the parsimony behavioral economics affords via the integratio
n of variables, (ii) a ubiquitous behavioral process it has identified
, (iii) the precise quantification of that behavioral process and its
predictive utility, (iv) a novel independent variable suggested by beh
avioral economics, and (v) the utility of behavioral economic notions
for the process of medication development. We conclude that behavioral
economics provides a novel conceptual framework that has utility for
the study of drug dependence.