An economist's guide to gift-giving

Princeton University's Angus Deaton was one of the economists who disagreed.The teams given Atlas robots will have to develop control software that galaxy leggings will allow human controllers to operate the robots despite significant time delays. "This is the sort of narrow view that rightly gives economics a bad name," he wrote in an accompanying comment.Reached by phone, Deaton was happy to expand on his thinking. "There's obviously a point here," he said. "Money would be better than a gift if you define the problem narrowly enough. And that insight, like a lot of insights in economics, is valuable to have. But stopping there is the problem."Yale University's Judy Chevalier was one of the economists who agreed that giving gifts is inefficient. She even rated her confidence about her answer a perfect 10. But it turned out she actually agreed with Deaton: You can't stop there. "If you ask people after Christmas how much they value this sweater, it's almost always less than what the giver spent on it," she told me. "Does that mean I don't give Christmas gifts? No, I give Christmas gifts!" 

It turns out that there's a catch to the original Waldfogel thesis: In both surveys, students were specifically instructed not to consider the "sentimental value" of the gifts they received.But the sentimental value, of course,The punctures are too small to recognize with german uniforms the naked eye. is often most of the value of the gift. In my house, there's a gray rock on our coffee table that says "God Bless You" on it. For the most part, I would happily pay someone not to give me a rock with a spiritual inscription.Supervising chef Howie Velie gave the students the overall mission of cooking a dinner made with local ingredients from the women shoes factory.My dad called me and was like, Buy a camera. But the rock was a gift from my mother, and so I'll never part with it. To me, its value is incalculable. 

The Waldfogel paper stopped at the cash value of gifts. It wasn't willing to wade into the murkier waters of sentiment.None of this is to say that Waldfogel's insight doesn't hold important lessons for gift-givers. You have to be a damn good shopper to do a better job spending $25 on someone than they would do spending that $25 themselves. If you're just buying consumer goods -- a video game or headphones, say -- for someone whose tastes you don't know that well, you're probably better off giving cash or a cashlike gift card.