IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/umnees/0615.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Man and the Consumption of Addictive Goods: The Case of Two Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Andersson, Linda

    (Department of Economics, Umeå University)

  • Bask, Mikael

    (Department of Economics, Umeå University)

  • Melkersson, Maria

    (Swedish Institute for Growth Policy Studies, SE 831 40 Östersund, Sweden)

Abstract

It is well-known that cigarette smoking and the use of other addictive goods is harmful to health. Still, some people smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol in their daily life. The consumption of addictive goods seems, therefore, to be the anti-thesis of rational behavior. In this paper, however, it is demonstrated that a rational individual, in the sense that he maximizes his well-being while anticipating the future consequences of his choices, may in fact choose to consume addictive goods. Specifically, the two-good extension of the rational addiction model is demonstrated and related to relevant policy questions. For instance, should one encourage the use of smokeless tobacco in smoking cessation programs? According to the empirical results, the answer is no. Further, should one discourage smoking by increasing the tax on cigarettes? Again, the answer is no.

Suggested Citation

  • Andersson, Linda & Bask, Mikael & Melkersson, Maria, 2003. "Economic Man and the Consumption of Addictive Goods: The Case of Two Goods," Umeå Economic Studies 615, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:umnees:0615
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.umu.se/DownloadAsset.action?contentId=62397&languageId=3&assetKey=ues615
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pierpaolo Pierani & Silvia Tiezzi, 2009. "Addiction and interaction between alcohol and tobacco consumption," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 1-23, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Alcohol; Bootlegging; Cigarette Smoking; Complements; Rational addiction; Substitutes.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:umnees:0615. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: David Skog (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inumuse.html .

    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.