Myopia and Addictive Behaviour

Bibliographic Data

ID9715104
AuthorsAthanasios Orphanides (Federal Reserve Board of Governors), David Zervos (Greenwich NatWest Markets)
Year1998
Volume108
Issue446
Pages75-91
Publication date1998-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Economic Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0133 • E-ISSN: 1468-0297
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1468-0297.00274
OpenAlexW2071962705
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited9

We present a theory of addictive behaviour which can account for addicts' apparent disregard for the future consequences of their current actions. The discounting of future utility is increasing in past consumption, indicating increasingly myopic behaviour as consumption increases. The intertemporal complementarity generated by the endogenous discounting produces multiple steady states which can account for the simultaneous existence of myopic addicts and non‐myopic non‐addicts within a time consiste nt expected utility framework. The theory also accounts for the probabilistic incidence of addiction and successful rehabilitation and the possibility of recurrence

Addiction · Addictive behavior · Complementarity (molecular biology · Consumption (sociology · Discounting · Economics · Probabilistic logic · Sociology · Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Economic theories and models · Neuroscience · Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access