From demand curves to public policy: introduction to the special issue on behavioral economics.

The papers comprising this issue were firstpresented aspart ofameetingsponsored bytheScience Board of the Association for BehaviorAnalysis, International, in Chicago, 2011. Theconference, entitled “Behavioral Economics:From Demand Curves to Public Policy,” was sonamedtocaptureabreadthoftopicscoveredbythe papers at the meeting, and well representedin the present issue.The coupling of behavioral economics andbehavior analysis is not new. Productive inter-actions span four decades, with some of theseminal papers appearing in this journal(Hursh, 1980, 1984; Rachlin & Krasnoff,1983). As a tangible indicator of the growth ofthe field (or at least the part of the fieldintersecting most directly with behavior analy-sis), a 1995 issue of the journal featured 10papers on behavioral economics, on topicsranging from choice and discounting to behav-ioralpharmacologyandbehavioralecology.Theproductive trends between behavioral econom-ics and behavior analysis, apparent in the 1995issue, have continued to the present day. Inaddition to the sustained development of somebrancheswithstrongempiricalrootsinbehavioranalysis (e.g., discounting, demand functions),thefield hassproutedsome newbranches,mostnotablypromisingnewinterfaceswiththebrain,with genetics, and with social behavior.This productive mix of old and new is ondisplayinthecurrentissue.Severalofthepaperscluster around the topic of delay discounting.This emphasis is appropriate given the deeproots of discounting phenomena in behavioranalysis. Indeed, among the initial violations ofclassical economic theory were the preferencereversals demonstrated in early self-controlexperiments with pigeons (Rachlin & Green,1972), ushering in more nuanced discountingmethods and models. These methods andmodels have found their way into a diverserange of populations, including substanceabuse, gambling, ADHD, and obesity, acrossvariousdomainsandlevelsofanalysis,includingbehavioral pharmacology, behavioral neurosci-ence,andbehavioralgenetics(seeOdum,2011,for a recent review).The remarkable consistency in discountingacross procedures and populations has sug-gested to some the possibility of commonmechanisms with the potential to unite seem-inglydisparatedomainsofresearchandanalysis.James MacKillop, for example, cites the consis-tencies over time as an important attribute ofendophenotypes—heritable mechanisms thatmay contribute to enduring patterns of addic-tive behavior. Similarly, Mikhail Koffarnus,David Jarmolowicz, Terry Mueller, and WarrenBickel take the consistency across time anddomains as an important component in a trans-disease model—the notion that excessive dis-counting underlies a range of impulsive-choiceproblems. Wouter van den Bos and SamuelMcClure use the consistency in discountingratesasapointofdepartureforidentifyingsomeimportant neural substrates of impulsive choicepatterns.While these conceptualizations imply at leastsome stability in behavior patterns over timeand situations, there are also clear exceptions.Following a careful analysis of the evidenceacross species, procedures, and domains,Leonard Green and Joel Myerson urge cautionin interpreting discounting data in relation toenduring trait-like qualities, suggesting insteadfunctional subtypes of impulsive and riskychoice. And indeed, even for the conceptualiza-tionsbasedinpartonstablebehaviorpatterns,itis often the exceptions that are most useful inpointing the way forward. Koffarnus and col-leagues review evidence showing that eventrait-like choice patterns can be molded byexperience.vandenBosand McClurepresent a