By way of
Mark Thoma, an absolutely
brilliant paper by economist Paul Pfleiderer of Stanford University looking at how economists use and abuse models. As he points our, if you make the right assumptions (ignoring market "distortions" such as liver disease, DUIs, etc.), then it's possible to show in a rigorous model that "it is optimal for humans to be drinking all of their waking hours." I've written
some more over at Medium.
