It was once generally believed that economic analysis had little to contribute to discussions about controlling or treating substance use and abuse because the initiation and level of use of addictive substances were thought not to be influenced by market forces. In particular, it was thought that the demand for addictive substances was not responsive to price. Now, after more than two decades of work by economists and more than a decade of behavioural psychologists studying these relationships, there is recognition and growing appreciation of the importance of economic variables as determinants of the demand for addictive substances.
This book is a collection of papers from a conference held in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 27-28 March 1997 that brought together researchers from these two disciplines to provide an opportunity for cross-fertilization and the integration of their methods and findings. The format of the conference and the book were both structured to promote this integration. The papers investigate the determinants of demand and the relationships between substance use and abuse and employment and income. Separate papers discuss the determinants of the demand for (1) tobacco, (2) alcohol, (3) cocaine and marijuana and (4) polydrug use. Two papers are presented on each topic, with one presented by one or more economists and the other presented by one or more behavioural psychologists. Each paper is discussed by two discussants, again one from each of the two disciplines. The substances analysed are tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and heroin, and the discussion is limited to the United States.
The book attempts to integrate the findings of two highly disparate disciplinesnot an easy task. It does a good job of demonstrating the different theoretical and methodological approaches of these disciplines to analysing substance use and abuse behaviour. Behavioural psychologists generally work with a small number of subjects-both animal and human-in laboratory settings where they can implement controlled experiments, obviating threats to the validity of their findings posed by a host of variables and their potentially confounding influences. In contrast, economists generally work with a much larger number of subjects, but generally do not have the rigorous experimental designs of behavioural psychologists. Instead, economists usually statistically analyse survey datasets that are collected for a variety of purposes and generally do not contain measures on all pertinent variables. The economist, however, can study a number of important substance abuse topics-such as initiation of use and substance abuse-related morbidity, mortality and criminal activities-that behavioural psychologists are not able study for ethical or practical reasons.
Behavioural psychologists measure 'price' as the level of effort expended in order to obtain a good or service (e.g. 'the number of presses on a lever that a smoker must complete in order to receive a puff on a cigarette', page 5). Economists, on the other 188 BOOK REVIEWS