Opium Addiction--A Behavioral / Economic Analysis

该项目的中心目标是使用计量经济学方法来估计鸦片“成瘾者”和“临时使用者”的不同行为特征。成瘾的经济学理论预测了两种截然不同的消费者的存在，一种是大量吸食毒品的人，或称“成瘾者”，另一种是少量吸食毒品的人，或称“偶尔吸食者”。虽然对成瘾物质的消费者群体对收入、价格和其他经济变量变化的总体反应进行了严格的计量经济学研究，但迄今为止还没有使用计量经济学方法区分“成瘾者”和“临时使用者”的研究。由于在20世纪初，鸦片的销售是合法的，并由政府垄断（鸦片政权）在荷属印度进行，因此存在关于鸦片价格、消费量、吸食鸦片人数和各种其他相关经济数据的独特而可靠的汇总统计数据。利用这些数据对理性和近视成瘾的模型进行估计，将为“成瘾者”和“临时使用者”这两种用户的行为特征提供推论。

The central goal of this project is to use econometric methods to estimate the different behavioral characteristics of "addicts" and "casual users" of opium. Economic theories of addiction predict the existence of two distinct kinds of consumers, those who consume large amounts of the drug, or "addicts," and those who consume small amounts of the drug, or "casual users." While there are rigorous econometric studies of the aggregate responses of groups of consumers of addictive substances to changes in income, price, and other economic variables, there exists no study to date that uses econometric methods to differentiate between "addicts" and "casual users." Because the sale of opium was legal and conducted by a government monopoly (the Opium Regie) in the Netherlands Indies in the early twentieth century, there exist unique and reliable aggregate statistics on prices, consumption, numbers of opium users, and a variety of other related economic data. The estimation of models of rational and myopic addiction using these data will provide inferences about the behavioral characteristics of two individual types of users, "addicts" and "casual users."