Rational Addiction Theory: A Survey of Opinions

This paper reports on results from a survey of views on the theory of rational addiction among academics who have contributed to this research. The topic is important because if the literature is viewed by its participants as an intellectual game, then policy makers should be aware of this so as not to derive actual policy from misleading models. A majority of the respondents believe the literature is a success story that demonstrates the power of economic reasoning. At the same time, they also believe the empirical evidence to be weak, and they disagree both on the type of evidence that would validate the theory and the policy implications. These results shed light on how many economists think about model building, evidence requirements and the policy relevance of their work.