Abstract
BACKGROUND: An economon is a dyadic economic unit of two participants who exchange mutually reinforcing commodities (e.g., addictive drugs for money). A human economon often consists of a buyer providing money to a supplier, while the supplier reciprocally provides some commodity to the buyer. Here, we develop the Quantitative Economon Model (QEM) by reviewing basic principles of behavioral economics and translating those principles into a quantitative model characterizing transactional behavior between buyers and suppliers that would be applicable to transactions involving drugs specifically, as well as other commodities. According to the model, transactions between a buyer and supplier depend on their respective economic demand for the commodities exchanged. Additionally, the model assumes that demand for commodities fluctuates across sequential transactions due to satiation and deprivation associated with consumption of those commodities, of particular relevance to addictive drugs. METHODS: We used a computational approach to simulate data from the QEM according to four conditions representing parametric manipulations of high or low levels of deprivation crossed with high or low levels of satiation (i.e., a 2×2 matrix of conditions). RESULTS: Simulations revealed patterns of transactional behavior that may be characteristic of a range of commodities. In particular, when deprivation-effects were high and satiation-effects were low, simulated transaction rates were characteristic of the high consumption rates observed with addictive drugs. In other conditions, transaction rates varied along patterns characteristic of consumption for other commodities like food. In sum, the QEM provides a framework for modeling, investigating, and predicting patterns of human transactional behavior.