Economics of Christmas

[cjsmith]

Anyone have the full text of Joel Waldfogel's "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas" they could let me read without breaking copyright law or something? (American Economic Review, December 1993.)

I once saw a well-written essay on the value that gets lost every holiday season. I suspect it was Waldfogel's paper. Of course, if I see Waldfogel's paper and it's full of formulae, I may start to suspect that what I read was instead an essay making Waldfogel's ideas accessible to non-economists like me.

The concept here is: I buy you a $29.95 thingy that you don't want, and you buy me a $29.95 thingy that I don't want. If someone queries us later about what we would pay for these objects ourselves, our answers total to far less than $59.90. Unless these objects are highly sentimental, equal happiness could have been achieved with less financial outlay. The essay I saw measured the extra outlay -- the "deadweight loss", it called it -- in billions of dollars per winter gift spree season. (Torn-up wrapping paper does not count toward this number. I had been misremembering that it did.)

Man, think what would happen if those billions went to buy things people wanted. Or [insert your favorite cause here]. Wow, the potential!

I know, I'm a scrooge. Sorry. Pick sentimental gifts and you needn't worry about the numbers. Anyway, I'd love to see Waldfogel's paper. If nobody's got an e-copy I'll probably go to the library, but not until I'm a lot less busy.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Isn't it fun? :-) I love thinking about this stuff! Too bad I have basically zilch formal training in the domain(s) in question. Might be even more intriguing if I had that.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

I love the whole concept of a non-zero-sum game too - isn't it wonderful how, merely by rearranging stuff, *value* can be created out of nothing? It's also fascinating how elegantly simple some of the experiments, both psychological and mathematical, that have been conducted in the area are. For instance, did you read about the one in which several people were each given one of two items (of roughly equal value) at random, and then offered the chance to switch - practically no one did, since (so the theory goes) people attach increased value to an object by the mere act of possessing it. The whole dollar auction experiment was beautiful too.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The whole non-zero-sum aspect of it seems full of amazing potential. "Oh look, what if we did THIS?" :-)

I saw the one offering chances to switch. I missed the dollar auction one!

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

http://www.heretical.com/pound/dollar.html

I wonder if studying these things formally would take some of the fun out of them :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh my, that one is HILARIOUS. I think I'm glad I don't go to parties given by people like Shubik!