Behavioral economics of drug self-administration. I. Functional equivalence of response requirement and drug dose.
Response requirement and dose of drug per administration are two separate factors that have been demonstrated to control drug self-administration. Recent developments in behavioral economics have shown that these two factors are in fact functionally equivalent for nondrug reinforcers, as indicated by a unit-price analysis. In this review, the unit-price notion was tested for drugs as reinforcers via a re-analysis of ten drug self-administration studies. The results of the re-analysis indicated that response requirement and reinforcer magnitude, the constituents of unit price, have functionally equivalent effects on drug consumption and that a positively decelerating demand curve is produced as unit price increases. This suggests that the behavioral-economic notion of unit price is a more parsimonious explanation of the effects of response requirement and dose in drug self-administration studies, in that it integrates and describes what was previously considered to be two distinct operations.
Bickel
W K
WK
Department of Psychiatry, University of Vermont, Burlington 05401.
DeGrandpre
R J
RJ
Higgins
S T
ST
Hughes
J R
JR
D001519:Behavior; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D006801:Humans; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D012646:Self Administration / Q000191:economics* / Q000523:psychology
D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations