(image credit: Peter Dutton CC BY)

Why are we giving gifts?

Lifting the veil over a mysterious custom

This is the time of the year when it is obligatory for any piece with even the vaguest reference to Christmas, gifts, or economics to mention economist Joel Waldfogel and his classic paper, The deadweight loss of Christmas. In it, he explains why the habit of giving each other presents at Christmas has an overall negative economic effect (to the tune…