Episodes of compulsive eating may lead to addiction. Changing relative prices does not always work for many food addicts turned overweight or obese individuals. This paper points…
Abstract
Purpose
Episodes of compulsive eating may lead to addiction. Changing relative prices does not always work for many food addicts turned overweight or obese individuals. This paper points to when such situations may arise and how they can be remedied.
Design/methodology/approach
We modify the standard neoclassical economics model assumption of indifference curves being convex to the origin. It becomes violated in situations when compulsive eaters become food addicts. As a result of that, the assumption of the concave (quasi-concave) utility function is violated too. We also introduce the possibility that compulsive eaters may have stable but nonconstant preferences.
Findings
Most important finding of our model is that a smooth dynamic path to addiction, caused by habit, disappears. Hence, the ability for smooth adjustment to relative price changes due to policies targeting obesity may not be applicable for a compulsive addict. We postulate the existence of thresholds past in which irreversible harm to addicted overeaters may occur. Reaching such states implies that no economic tools at our disposal could reverse the harm, which, in turn, deem that many policies directed at altering relative prices are ineffective in correcting overeating addiction and its consequences.
Social implications
Even if we believe in consumer sovereignty, it is possible to shape consumer behavior via policy actions, including the behavior of extremum seekers turned addicts. The public policy of obesity should consider, in this case, its social cost.
Originality/value
No prior research has considered food addiction in light of compulsive eating caused by extremum-seeking behavior. Addiction correcting food policies always relied on either rational or myopic addiction models.
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Dragan Miljkovic and Cary Effertz
The purpose of this paper is to show that empirical analysis of consumption of a good, using the same empirical and econometric model as it is done in standard applied demand…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show that empirical analysis of consumption of a good, using the same empirical and econometric model as it is done in standard applied demand analysis, may be based on the underlying behavioral model other than the rational choice.
Design/methodology/approach
Reference point approach originally developed by psychologists and later translated into reference price approach by business scholars is used to demonstrate this point. Empirically, a model of consumption of broilers in the USA is estimated using regression analysis and its results and implications are discussed.
Findings
The same empirical model can be used to represent more than one underlying model of consumer behavior.
Research limitations/implications
This paper raises the question of which underlying behavioral theory is valid, and under what circumstances might that validity change. The importance of accounting for reference prices appears to be validated, but the fact that both theories lead to the same or similar empirical formulation does little to secure either theory as right or wrong.
Originality/value
Research in consumer behavior and demand generally assumes the existence of one superior theoretical behavioral model. This paper suggests that such claims are unfounded since standard current empirical modeling of consumer behavior accommodates more than one underlying theory.
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This chapter proposes a novel nonnormative approach to evaluating quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of food security.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter proposes a novel nonnormative approach to evaluating quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of food security.
Methodology/approach
On the demand side, we consider the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of the food security system, whose mechanisms should be evaluated by their impact on the quality of life of an endangered population. On the supply side, the motives of food aid donors and food security providers (directly and via policy mechanisms) are discussed in the context of the deservingness heuristic.
Findings
The model illustrates three problems with measuring food security-related quality of life: peoples’ different expectations, the different points at which people stand on their food security trajectory, and the potential for an evolving reference value of peoples’ expectations. The deservingness heuristic is the mechanism behind the domestic and international food security aid that occurs via evolutionary forces, or cultural, institutional, and ideological forces.
Social implications
Food security is a problem that requires a humanistic approach rooted in the evolutionary process/development of the human race. Food security can be misused by the food aid/welfare recipients for their own purposes. Likewise, food security programs by food aid/welfare donors can be targeted unethically when used to achieve the ideological, institutional, and political goals of the donors. Differentiating between the behavioral causes of providing food security may be helpful in predicting whether aid/welfare will be provided to the needy at all.