IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jhecon/v17y1998i4p427-474.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The demand for cocaine by young adults: a rational addiction approach

Author

Listed:
  • Grossman, Michael
  • Chaloupka, Frank J.

Abstract

This paper applies the rational addiction model, which emphasizes the interdependency of past, current, and future consumption of an addictive good, to the demand for cocaine by young adults in the Monitoring the Future Panel. The price of cocaine is added to this survey from the System to Retrieve Information from Drug Evidence (STRIDE) maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice. Results suggest that annual participation and frequency of use given participation are negatively related to the price of cocaine. In addition current participation is positively related to past and future participation, and current frequency of use given participation is positively related to past and future frequency of use. The long-run price elasticity of total consumption (participation multiplied by frequency given participation) of -1.18 is substantial. A permanent 10 percent reduction in price due, for example, to the legalization of cocaine would cause the number of cocaine users to grow by slightly more than 8 percent and would increase the frequency of use among users by a little more than 3 percent. Surely, both proponents and opponents of drug legalization should take account of this increase in consumption in debating their respective positions.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Grossman, Michael & Chaloupka, Frank J., 1998. "The demand for cocaine by young adults: a rational addiction approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 427-474, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:17:y:1998:i:4:p:427-474
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-6296(97)00046-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manning, W. G. & Duan, N. & Rogers, W. H., 1987. "Monte Carlo evidence on the choice between sample selection and two-part models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 59-82, May.
    2. James J. Heckman & Thomas E. MaCurdy, 1985. "A Simultaneous Equations Linear Probability Model," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 18(1), pages 28-37, February.
    3. Hausman, Jerry, 2015. "Specification tests in econometrics," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 112-134.
    4. Griliches, Zvi & Hausman, Jerry A., 1986. "Errors in variables in panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 93-118, February.
    5. Becker, Gary S & Grossman, Michael & Murphy, Kevin M, 1991. "Rational Addiction and the Effect of Price on Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 237-241, May.
    6. Chaloupka, Frank, 1991. "Rational Addictive Behavior and Cigarette Smoking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(4), pages 722-742, August.
    7. Becker, Gary S & Grossman, Michael & Murphy, Kevin M, 1994. "An Empirical Analysis of Cigarette Addiction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 396-418, June.
    8. John DiNardo & Thomas Lemieux, 1992. "Alcohol, Marijuana, and American Youth: The Unintended Effects of Government Regulation," NBER Working Papers 4212, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Keeler, Theodore E. & Hu, Teh-Wei & Barnett, Paul G. & Manning, Williard G., 1993. "Taxation, regulation, and addiction: A demand function for cigarettes based on time-series evidence," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 1-18, April.
    10. Wasserman, Jeffrey & Manning, Willard G. & Newhouse, Joseph P. & Winkler, John D., 1991. "The effects of excise taxes and regulations on cigarette smoking," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 43-64, May.
    11. Caulkins Jonathan P., 1995. "Domestic Geographic Variation in Illicit Drug Prices," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 38-56, January.
    12. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    13. Grossman, Michael & Chaloupka, Frank J & Sirtalan, Ismail, 1998. "An Empirical Analysis of Alcohol Addiction: Results from the Monitoring the Future Panels," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(1), pages 39-48, January.
    14. Frank J. Chaloupka & Adit Laixuthai, 1997. "Do Youths Substitute Alcohol and Marijuana? Some Econometric Evidence," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 23(3), pages 253-276, Summer.
    15. Cragg, John G, 1971. "Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 829-844, September.
    16. Griliches, Zvi, 1979. "Sibling Models and Data in Economics: Beginnings of a Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 37-64, October.
    17. Leung, Siu Fai & Yu, Shihti, 1996. "On the choice between sample selection and two-part models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1-2), pages 197-229.
    18. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock, 1997. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 557-586, May.
    19. Chaloupka, Frank J & Saffer, Henry & Grossman, Michael, 1993. "Alcohol-Control Policies and Motor-Vehicle Fatalities," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(1), pages 161-186, January.
    20. Silverman, Lester P. & Spruill, Nancy L., 1977. "Urban crime and the price of heroin," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 80-103, January.
    21. Nisbet, Charles T & Vakil, Firouz, 1972. "Some Estimates of Price and Expenditure Elasticities of Demand for Marijuana Among U.C.L.A. Students," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 54(4), pages 473-475, November.
    22. Coate, Douglas & Grossman, Michael, 1988. "Effects of Alcoholic Beverage Prices and Legal Drinking Ages on Youth Alcohol Use," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 145-171, April.
    23. Becker, Gary S & Murphy, Kevin M, 1988. "A Theory of Rational Addiction," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 675-700, August.
    24. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1973. "Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 521-565, May-June.
    25. van Ours, Jan C, 1995. "The Price Elasticity of Hard Drugs: The Case of Opium in the Dutch East Indies, 1923-1938," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(2), pages 261-279, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grossman, Michael & Chaloupka, Frank J & Sirtalan, Ismail, 1998. "An Empirical Analysis of Alcohol Addiction: Results from the Monitoring the Future Panels," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(1), pages 39-48, January.
    2. Liu, Jin-Long & Liu, Jin-Tan & Hammitt, James K. & Chou, Shin-Yi, 1999. "The price elasticity of opium in Taiwan, 1914-1942," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 795-810, December.
    3. Anne Bretteville-Jensen, 2006. "Drug Demand – Initiation, Continuation and Quitting," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(4), pages 491-516, December.
    4. Cook, Philip J. & Moore, Michael J., 2000. "Alcohol," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 30, pages 1629-1673, Elsevier.
    5. Michael Grossman, 1993. "Policy Watch: Alcohol and Cigarette Taxes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 211-222, Fall.
    6. Jonathan Klick & Thomas Stratmann, 2006. "Subsidizing Addiction: Do State Health Insurance Mandates Increase Alcohol Consumption?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 175-198, January.
    7. Ziggy MacDonald, 2004. "What Price Drug Use? The Contribution of Economics to an Evidence‐Based Drugs Policy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(2), pages 113-152, April.
    8. Cook, Philip J. & Moore, Michael J., 1999. "Alcohol," Working Papers 156, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    9. Brian S. Ferguson, 2000. "Interpreting the rational addiction model," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(7), pages 587-598, October.
    10. Collet, Roger & de Lapparent, Matthieu & Hivert, Laurent, 2015. "Are French households car-use addicts? A microeconomic perspective," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 86-94.
    11. Donald S. Kenkel & Ping Wang, 1999. "Are Alcoholics in Bad Jobs?," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic Analysis of Substance Use and Abuse: An Integration of Econometric and Behavioral Economic Research, pages 251-278, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, 1998. "Adolescent Alcohol and Marijuana Consumption: Is There Really a Gateway Effect?," NBER Working Papers 6348, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Michael Grossman, 2005. "Individual Behaviours and Substance Use: The Role of Price," Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, in: Substance Use: Individual Behaviour, Social Interactions, Markets and Politics, pages 15-39, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    14. Tetsuji Yamada & Michael Kendix & Tadashi Yamada, 1996. "The impact of alcohol consumption and marijuana use on high school graduation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 5(1), pages 77-92, January.
    15. Kan, Kamhon, 2007. "Cigarette smoking and self-control," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 61-81, January.
    16. Frank J. Chaloupka & Michael Grossman & John A. Tauras, 1999. "The Demand for Cocaine and Marijuana by Youth," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic Analysis of Substance Use and Abuse: An Integration of Econometric and Behavioral Economic Research, pages 133-156, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Eugenio Martínez & Raúl Mejía & Eliseo Pérez Stable, 2008. "Elasticity of cigarette demand in Argentina: An empirical analysis using vector error-correction model," Working Papers 1, Instituto de Estudios Laborales y del Desarrollo Económico (IELDE) - Universidad Nacional de Salta - Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Jurídicas y Sociales.
    18. Silvia Tiezzi, 2005. "An empirical analysis of tobacco addiction in Italy," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 6(3), pages 233-243, September.
    19. W. David Bradford, 2003. "Pregnancy and the Demand for Cigarettes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1752-1763, December.
    20. Hammar, Henrik & Carlsson, Fredrik, 2001. "Smokers' Decisions To Quit Smoking," Working Papers in Economics 59, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:17:y:1998:i:4:p:427-474. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505560 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.