Consumer Casualties

Junmin Wan takes a two prong approach to analysing this pressure in Japan in his new volume Consumer Casualties. He first clarifies the consumer preference for habit to identify useful approaches toward solving a number of economic issues, such as gambling and other addictive practices.

"This book is a seminal piece of work on what might be called the 'economics of addiction' - economic analysis of the consumption of addictive goods, such as cigarettes and gambling. Wan uses a variety of unique data sets and creative methodologies, such as natural experiments, to analyze various aspects of addictive behavior from both theoretical and empirical perspectives and obtains numerous interesting and original findings. I recommend this book highly to researchers, students, and policymakers alike." - Charles Yuji Horioka, Research Professor, Asian Growth Research Institute, Kitakyushu, Japan; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, USA "A superb empirical attempt to analyze consumers' addictions to smoking and gambling with a 'natural experiment' approach. The book contains rich and important implications for public policy, such as cigarette tax, disclosure of cigarette contents, and gambling regulations." - Kazuo Ogawa, Professor, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, Japan

Junmin Wan is Professor of Economics at Fukuoka University, Japan.