The evolution of the economic theory of addictive goods markets

The article presents the evolution of the economic theory of the markets of addictive goods, including the following stages of development: the formation of the economic theory’s elements on the basis of opposition of domestic state monopoly trend to foreign excise regulation of individual markets in the period of criticism of mercantilism and in the beginning of the classical school (the 17th - 18th centuries); the implantation of a liberal excise regulation in the domestic economy in the period of classical political economics in the 1820s; the extension of the research object structure with consumer behavior in the period of neoclassical theory (the second half of the 19th - the mid of the 20th century); the development of domestic state monopoly conception in the period of the ideology of national economic schools of Germany and Marxist political economics (the 1840s - first half of the 20th century); the allocation of the economics of drugs out from the economics of crime represented abroad by Keynesian and neo-liberal paradigm (from the 1960s -1980s); the formation of a foreign neo-institutional paradigm of economic theory (from the 1970s) and penetration of its elements into domestic research (from the beginning of the 21st century). The domestic economic research is far behind the Western one as far as the tools and target settings of state regulation of the markets of addictive goods and the object structure are concerned. To overcome the lag and to improve the efficiency of the state and public regulation of specific markets for addictive products, it is proposed to combine the separate studies of the economics of drugs, alcohol-containing products, tobacco products and electronic cigarettes, energy drinks, gambling and other goods with stereotypes of consumption based on addictiveness into the economics of addictive products.