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

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I'm not as big on wrapping paper. I do think a well-wrapped gift looks nice, but my lower opinion may be due to the fact that I don't think I do a very good job at wrapping. Often, because of this and general laziness, I'll give a gift unwrapped.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm not big on it myself, but I know people appreciate it and enjoy it. I appreciate and enjoy the beautiful design on the paper itself, sometimes. :-)

You would SO get along with my dad. We tease him about his wrapping style. (First he "wraps" the gift completely in newspaper, because this helps obscure the printing on the object itself. Then he wraps again in wrapping paper -- of ANY kind, anything he can get his hands on, even if it's a set of scraps that don't match at all but *together* are big enough to cover the box.) It's now become a tradition that every time the family is together with gifts under the tree, at least one present must be wrapped in mismatched scraps, Dad-style.

I like my dad. :)