The Economics of Drug Abuse: a Quantitative Assessment of Drug Demand

Behavioral economics provides a quantitative means to describe the demand for alternative drugs by a single organism. The graphs show the demand for methadone (squares) in the presence of hydro-morphone (triangles); the price of the latter is held constant (see text for details). The graph in A. represents a closed economy; the graph in B. represents an open economy. Data are from one human participant (R. Spiga, personal communication).