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

Elasticity of demand. A. An organism’s demand for a given reinforcer is defined as elastic if consumption drops significantly as the unit price (i.e., FR divided by unit administered) of the reinforcer is raised. B. The maximal price (P_max) of a reinforcer and maximal output of responses (O_max) of the organism under a given set of conditions are both parameters that can be used to describe behavior with regard to a given reinforcer. See text for details.