Christmas-nomics
Some totally unrelated items about economics and Christmas:
For my own views on gift-giving, etc., see here and here, and follow the links in those pieces for some very interesting analyses.
- Daniel Gross writes in Slate that Christmas tree sales are a good concurrent indicator of consumer spending during Christmas.
- Christmas lights and timers. With the invention of the little LED Christmas lights that use very little electricity, it probably makes no sense to buy a $30 outdoor timer that will turn the lights off during the day. I haven't done the calculations, but I can readily imagine that leaving even 120 of these lights on for an extra 16 hours a day for a month adds no more than a few dollars to the electricity bill. So why bother with a timer? In fact, if the prices represent the opportunity costs of using the scarce resources in various ways, it would downright anti-social and inefficient to buy a timer for these lights.
- Tim Harford advises us to burn our Christmas card lists. I just don't see this as a big issue, for some reason; even less so with e-cards that we and our "prolonged tenuous contacts" exchange.
For my own views on gift-giving, etc., see here and here, and follow the links in those pieces for some very interesting analyses.
Category: Posted on
Friday, December 23, 2005 at 12:31am
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