OPINION

Christmas gifts and economic logic

News, Megan McArdle, Published on 26/12/2016

» Spend much time with economists around this time of year, and you will, eventually, get around to hearing about the dreadful inefficiency of exchanging gifts. You desperately wrack your brains for something, and then buy a supply of scented bath oil for someone who has only got a shower; they return the favour by giving you three books you already had. This is, an economist will solemnly point out, an extreme waste of resources, because each of you would have been happier taking the same amount of cash to buy something for yourself.