Furthermore, the results suggest that influences on this associat

Furthermore, the results suggest that influences on this association may vary across different depression symptom dimensions. Thus, it may be fruitful for future research to parse depressive symptoms into component subdimensions to avoid failing to model important phenotypic heterogeneity in Gemcitabine HCl depression that may differentially impact smoking behavior. Funding This research was supported by grant K08DA02504 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (grant 1 P50CA84735-01) from the National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Declaration of Interests None declared.
Smoking remains a major source of morbidity and mortality in the United States and worldwide (Mokdad, Marks, Stroup, & Gerberding, 2004; World Health Organization, 2008).

One major determinant of tobacco consumption is the cost of cigarettes. For example, at the population level, health economic studies have revealed that cigarette taxation substantially influences consumption (e.g., Levy, Chaloupka, & Gitchell, 2004), and at the level of the individual smoker, behavioral economic studies have similarly revealed that the costs of cigarettes substantially affect consumption (e.g., Johnson & Bickel, 2006). Within behavioral economics, individual demand curve analysis is one methodology to quantify the relative value of commodities, including cigarettes. This refers to examining the relationship between a person��s consumption of a commodity and its cost.

As prices increase, demand typically decreases at a relatively low rate initially but then becomes more precipitous at higher prices, finally terminating altogether. Importantly, several indices of motivation can be generated from demand curves (Hursh & Silberberg, 2008; Murphy & MacKillop, 2006). For example, the start and the finish of the demand curve are referred to as intensity and breakpoint. Intensity is defined as consumption at zero or minimal cost, whereas breakpoint is defined as the first price that fully suppresses consumption to zero. In addition, a demand curve can be used to generate a measure of expenditure, termed Omax (i.e., maximum expenditure across prices), and a measure of overall price sensitivity, termed elasticity (i.e., the proportional slope of the demand curve or, more simply, how responsive the individual is to increases in price).

Together, these indices provide a multidimensional assessment of an individual��s relative value of cigarettes. A recent approach for conducting demand curve analysis is the use of a cigarette Brefeldin_A purchase task (CPT), which assesses individuals�� estimated consumption of cigarettes at varying levels of price. This typically starts at zero or very low prices and escalates to very high prices.

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