ABSTRACT
Over the past 20 years compulsive buying has moved from relative obscurity to a frequently mentioned topic in many of our leading institutions ranging from the mass media to the courts. Its progression has gone from a derisive topic of humor (usually at the expense of women) in comic strips and talk show monologues to serious discussions on television, in newspapers and magazines, to serving as a mitigating circumstance in criminal trials, to a research topic at rst tier medical schools and universities. In fact, compulsive buying is now commonly recognized and addressed by clinical practice, and is being considered as a disorder for inclusion in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association). ere have now been several score of academic papers written on this topic in elds as diverse as nance, accounting, law, medicine, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, and economics. is is a great distance traveled from where we began our research on compulsive buying almost 20 years ago.
