Análisis Económico de los Comportamientos Adictivos no Saludables: Principales Propuestas Teóricas

Fabiola Portillo and Fernando Antoñanzas

No 2001-08, Working Papers from FEDEA

Abstract: Addiction is an issue that as many others admits different approaches: psychologic, sociologic, medical,...Very recently -within the last two decades-, Gary Becker, once more, has introduced the economic perspective to analyse this phenomenon. Since addition is usually leading to market activities, as consumption, demand theory must be widened to incorporate different utility functions that can answer, in the way economy theory does, to this particular behavior. Moreover, it is the theory of the consumer demand the main scope of all the modelling efforts. Not need to say that a better knowledge of the economic interactions among the variables responsible of demand would be an element to understand market equilibrium, to obtain more acurate predictions and to stablish and measure the effects of different policies and regulations. In fact, several authors have developed their theories to offer an analytical instrument to social concerns on tobacco, alcohol and drug consumption. In this sense, this survey is also part of a broader research on tobacco demand, that deals with health risk perception as a key variable of utility functions. Interested readers could find three empirical studies related to Spanish variables in The Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (Antoñanzas et al, Rovira et al, Viscusi et al (2000:21;2/3). After a wide revision of current economic literature, a lack of detailed information on the evolution and main features of the theories on addiction has been detected. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to provide the reader with a variety of theoretical models on addiction, the linkages among them as well as a critical evaluation -when possible- on their feasibility to end up with empirical applications. Several tables and figures are also shown as a help to better understand the influences of some theories on other approaches, the timing when they were developed, the most recent research on this issue and a some hints on the future perspectives in this field. This paper is organized as follows: firstly, the differential inputs of each theory are described and the framework of uncertainty is settled. Secondly, the paper presents the different theoretical approaches: miopic preferences, rational addictions, bounded rationality (competitive preferences and limited knowledge) as well as addiction under uncertainty on unknown addictive power and on health risks. Finally, in the summary, a checklist of eight points is included to allow a quick overview of the main contributions of each group of models; then some conclusions are also provided in the sense that the inclusion of constrains in rationality and uncertainty in consumer behavior are the main and promising trends in modelling.

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