Truland Building, 400A
December 11, 2008, 07:00 PM to 07:00 PM
This dissertation extends the economics of addiction. It clarifies important distinctions that pervious work have missed or muddled, generalizes the habit formation framework in several ways, and demonstrates a surprising behavioral equivalence between the behavior predicted by the models of quasi-hyperbolic discounting and quasi-habit formation. It also extends the analysis into multiple addictions by recognizing the limitation from the commodity-specificity of habit. It provides a framework of multiple habit-formations and generalizes the concept of adjacent complementarity.