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]

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!