ABSTRACT
Concepts of behavioral economics have proven useful for understanding the environmental control of overall levels of behavior for a variety of commodities in closed systems (Bickel, DeGrandpre, Higgins, & Hughes, 1990; Bickel, DeGrandpre, Hughes, & Higgins, 1991; Bickel & Madden, 1997; Foltin, 1992; Hursh, 1984; Lea, 1978; Lea & Roper, 1977; Rashotte & Henderson, 1988) and the factors that control the allocation of behavioral resources among available reinforcers (Hursh, 1980, 1984; Hursh & Bauman, 1987). As a practical matter, this approach has borrowed terms from microeconomics, especially consumer demand theory and labor supply theory (Allison, 1983; Allison, Miller, & Wozny, 1979; Lea, 1978; Rachlin, Green, Kagel, & Battalio, 1976; Staddon, 1979; see Watson & Holman, 1977, for a review of relevant microeconomic theory); however, these terms often take on a special meaning when applied within behavior analysis and are not simple replacements for common behavioral processes, such as reinforcement, discrimination, differentiation, and the like. Indeed, behavioral economics has garnered interest because it has directed our attention to new phenomena previously ignored and new functional relations previously unnamed. In this chapter, behavioral economics is applied to the analysis of consumption of various reinforcers and the responding that produces that consumption. This chapter provides some basic groundwork that serves as a primer for understanding behavioral economic concepts as used in other chapters of this book.
