{"id":652,"date":"2007-08-05T10:08:48","date_gmt":"2007-08-05T16:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=652"},"modified":"2007-12-08T15:48:29","modified_gmt":"2007-12-08T22:36:29","slug":"the-economics-of-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=652","title":{"rendered":"The Economics Of Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2171373\/\">Tim Harford writes for Slate<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I feel that it is time to share a secret. When I left on my vacation just over a week ago, I was fighting a battle with a deep-rooted addiction. I feel able to admit this, since over the course of my holiday I was able to go through cold turkey, conquer the addiction, and face the world clean.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s decaffeinated coffee for me from now on.<\/p>\n<p>Addiction&mdash;even to something as benign as filter coffee&mdash;is an unlikely topic for an economist to tackle, because most economic theory is predicated on rational behavior, and addiction seems to be quintessentially irrational.<\/p>\n<p>The logical response appeared in 1988. &quot;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.drugtext.org\/library\/articles\/becker02.htm\">A Theory of Rational Addiction<\/a>&quot; was published by Kevin M. Murphy and Nobel laureate Gary Becker, and has defined economists&#8217; approaches to addiction ever since. The theory is easy to state: Addicts choose their poison despite knowing that it is habit-forming and dangerous, and they do so because they expect the highs to outweigh the lows.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><!--adsense--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Harford writes for Slate: I feel that it is time to share a secret. When I left on my vacation just over a week ago, I was fighting a battle with a deep-rooted addiction. I feel able to admit &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=652\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}