Business Life: Christmas special
First published in Business Life magazine, December 2007
It will not have escaped your notice that Christmas is upon us. And for gift-giving advice, why not turn to an economist?
That seems a strange recommendation, and it becomes even stranger when you consider that by far the most notorious Yuletide contribution from economists is a research paper titled “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas”, which was published in a respected economic journal back in 1993.
The author is Joel Waldfogel, described in print not long ago as a “slightly balding imp” by one of his fellow economists. But while his ongoing research into the economics of gift-giving tends to be seen as an example of the limitations of the dismal science, I believe that Professor Waldfogel’s work has been utterly misunderstood. Learn More
