Scroogenomics: Why you shouldn't buy presents for the holidays

Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays

Volumn , Issue , 2009, Pages 1-174

  Waldfogel, Joel ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84923999235     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Book

References (66)

1. George W. Bush's statements on shopping appear in his September 20, 2001, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html, accessed August 15, 2008), as well as a December 20, 2006, press conference (http://www.whitehouse .gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061220-1.html, accessed August 15, 2008).
2. Many of the lessons of behavioral economics are readably recounted in Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational (New York: Harper Collins, 2008).
3. The NRF holiday-spending definition, along with their forecast of 2007 holiday spending, appears in "Citing Economic Concerns, NRF Forecasts Holiday Sales Gains of Four Percent," September 20, 2007, at www.nrf.com, accessed September 26, 2007.
4. Economic studies of seasonality include Robert B. Barsky and Jeffrey A. Miron, "The Seasonal Cycle and the Business Cycle," Journal of Political Economy. 97, no. 3 (1989): 503-34.
5. Data on monthly U.S. retail sales are available from the Census Bureau, in "Monthly Retail Trade and Food Services," http://www.census .gov/mrts/www/mrts.html, accessed August 4, 2008.
6. A number of polling organizations provide annual surveys of holiday-spending plans. See http://www.gallup.com/poll/25495/Christmas-Shoppers-Appear-Jolly-Mood.aspx, accessed September 13, 2008, 28
7. See http://www.americansportscastersonline .com/wolfinterview.html, accessed July 28, 2008, for information about Warner Wolfe and his "let's go to the video" catchphrase.
8. The Citizens Against Government Waste's annual "Pig Books" are available at http://www .cagw.org/.
9. John A. List and Jason F. Shogren, "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas: Comment," American Economic Review 88 (1998): 1350-55
10. Bradley J. Ruffle and Orit Tykocinski, "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas: Comment," American Economic Review 90 (2000): 319-24
11. Sara J. Solnick and David Hemenway, "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas: Comment," American Economic Review 86 (1996): 1299-1305.
12. Results on how the efficiency of giving varies with the frequency of contact between giver and recipients are described in Joel Waldfogel, "Gifts, Cash, and Stigma," Economic Inquiry 40 (2002): 415-27.
13. The American Time Use Survey is available at 38 http://www.bls.gov/tus/.
14. The time allocations for 2007 are reported in table A-1, "Time Spent in Detailed Primary Activities" (http:// www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2007.pdf ).
15. Some information on the size of the federal portion of the U.S. public housing budget is available in "Bush Administration Seeks $38.5 Billion HUD Budget in 2009: Additional $1 Billion Requested for Housing Counseling, Affordable Housing & Homeless" (http://www .hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr08-014.cfm, accessed September 13, 2008).
16. Data on U.S. spending on education are drawn from National Center for Education Statistics Fast Facts, at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display .asp?id=372, accessed September 13, 2008.
17. Data on the role of gifts in income are avail-55 able in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, at http://www.bls.gov/cex/
18. accessed August 4, 2008. See the tables http://www.bls.gov/cex/2006/Standard/income.pdf
19. http://www.bls .gov/cex/2006/Standard/higherincome.pdf, accessed September 13, 2008.
20. U.S. and world population are from http://www .census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.
21. U.S. share of world gasoline consumption is from http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/fensec.asp, both accessed August 3, 2008.
22. See the obesity statistics at http://www.heart stats.org/temp/Figsp11.14bspweb07.xls, accessed July 31, 2008.
23. The OECD retail sales data for many countries are available at their Main Economic Indicators site: http://oecd-stats.ingenta.com/ OECD/TableViewer/DimView.aspx?TableNa me=6jmeicd.ivt&IF_Language=eng, accessed August 8, 2008. While the OECD has some Israeli data, the monthly retail sales data for Israel were obtained from the Bank of Israel site: http://www.bankisrael.gov.il/series/en/cat alog/commerce/value%20of%20sales%20indi ces/, accessed August 8, 2008.
24. Data on the Christian share of nations' population are drawn from Cross-National Data:Religion Indexes, Religious Adherents, and Other Data, The Association of Religious Data Archives, http://thearda.com/Archive/CrossNa tional.asp.
25. Information on Russian Christmas is drawn from "Christmas Had to Survive Dark Years of Communism to Return to Russia," Pravda, December 12, 2007 (http://english.pravda.ru/ russia/history/25-12-2007/103134-christmas-0, accessed August 8, 2008), as well as Alessandra Stanley, "Dec. 25 in Russia: The Adoration of the Monetary," New York Times, December 24, 1996.
26. Information on Japan's Christmas traditions 62 is drawn from "Christmas in Japan," http:// www.japaneselifestyle.com.au/culture/christmas .html, accessed September 26, 2007
27. "Christmas in Japan," http://www.rochedalss.eq.edu.au/xmas/ japanchristmas.htm, accessed September 26, 2007.
28. Information on the customary gift giving holidays in Israel is provided in http://israeltrade .gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/4015696D-CEB6-4544-B9FF-DA95338749B1/0/TheGiftGivingSeasons .pdf.
29. The Euromonitor data on retail sales by country are available at http://www.euromonitor .com/, accessed August 11, 2008.
30. Monthly retail sales data for the United States are available back to 1967 at http://www.census .gov/mrts/www/noverview.html, accessed July 28, 2008.
31. The contemporary scholarly account of Christmas clubs, Lloyd M. Cosgrove, "Christmas Clubs," Quarterly Journal of Economics 41, no. 4 (August 1927): 732-39, is the source for the quotes.
32. The script containing Homer Simpson's line is available at http://www.geocities.com/great_ tv_quotes/shows/simpsons.html, accessed September 15, 2008.
33. Data on the share of low-income households' expenditures on food and housing are drawn from table 46, "Income before Taxes: Shares of Average Annual Expenditures and Sources of Income," Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2006, http://www.bls.gov/cex/2006/share/income .pdf. Data on high-income consumers' expenditures are drawn from table 2301
34. "Higher Income before Taxes: Shares of Average Annual Expenditures and Sources of Income," Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2006, http:// www.bls.gov/cex/2006/share/higherincome.pdf.
35. The Gallup Poll cited in the chapter is available at http://www.gallup.com/poll/102865/ Christmas-Spending-Projection-Still-Looks-Positive.aspx#2, accessed September 9, 2008.
36. The Siena and Conference Board surveys are available at http://www.siena.edu/uploaded Files/Home/Parents_and_Community/Com munity_Page/Siena_Research_Institute/Freq %20and%20Cross%20Tab.pdf and http://www .conference-board.org/cgi-bin/MsmGo.exe? grab_id=0&EXTRA_ARG=&SCOPE=Public &host_id=42&page_id=223&query=holiday %20gift%20giving&hiword=gift%20GIFTED %20giving%20HOLIDAYS%20holiday%20 GIFTS%20 and http://www.conference-board .org/pdf_free/Spending2007.pdf, respectively, both accessed September 9, 2008.
37. Art Conrad's story is documented in Susan Gilmore, "Newcomer on Block Calls Santa Display Art, but Bremerton Neighbors Repulsed," Seattle Times, December 23, 2007, accessed at http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/ archive/?date=20071223&slug=santa23m, July 21, 2008.
38. Information about the pope's 2005 condemnation of commercialism is drawn from the Catholic News Agency press release "Pope Encourages Family Nativity Scenes, Condemns Christmas Commercialism," Vatican City, December 12, 2005 (www.catholicnews agency.com).
39. The New American Dream organization's exhortation to "Simplify the Holidays" is online at http://www.newdream.org/holiday/index.php, accessed July 28, 2008.
40. Information about Crown Financial Ministries is available at www.crown.org/aboutcrown
41. Howard Dayton, "Countering the Commercialization of Christmas" (Baptist Press), http://www.crosswalk.com/finances/1449409/, accessed July 27, 2008.
42. The American Family Association's mission is available at http://www.afa.net/mission.asp, accessed August 11, 2008.
43. Fox anchor Bill O'Reilly's views on Christ-103 mas are presented in "Christmas Under Siege:The Big Picture," December 24, 2004, at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140742, 00.html, accessed August 11, 2008.
44. The Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/The_Jetsons provides a sufficiently authoritative description of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Jetsons.
45. Preston McAfee's Introduction to Economic Analysis (2006), a free online microeconomics textbook, provides an even more authoritative description of principal- agent models, at http://www.introecon .com/.
46. See the Grand Theft Auto IV Web site, at http://www.rockstargames.com/IV/, for a description of the game. But only after you claim to be old enough. When I sought to enter the site claiming I was born in 2001, my University of Pennsylvania office computer was permanently locked out: "Sorry, you may not view this site." The site was accessed August 6, 2008.
47. For a nice, and perhaps the only, scholarly account of gift cards, see Jennifer Pate Offenberg, "Gift Cards," Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 227-38.
48. Quotes on the diminishing stigma of gift cards are drawn from National Public Radio, All Things Considered, "Sales of Gift Cards Grow, and Transpire Earlier," December 13, 2006, at http://nl.newsbank.com/
49. Patrick Huguenin, Eloise Parker, and Jane Ridley, "The Present That They Really Want: Holiday Gift Cards," New York Daily News, December 3, 2007
50. Kate Prahlad, "Merry Halloween! Christmas Shopping Now Starts Well before Thanksgiving," Southern Maryland Online, November 23, 2007 (at http://somd.com/news/headlines/2007/6773.shtml, accessed August 10, 2008).
51. Information on the desirability of gift cards to recipients is drawn from Huguenin, Parker, and Ridley (2007), cited above, and Judy Lin. "It's the Law: On Balance, Card Recipients Will Get Break," Sacramento Bee, December 25, 2007.
52. For information on the treatment of gift cards in U.S. retail sales statistics, see "Monthly Retail Trade Survey, Frequently Asked Questions," http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/faq .html.
53. Data on gift card nonredemption are drawn from the Montgomery County, MD, Office of Consumer Protection, "Gift Cards 2007: Best and Worst Retail Cards; A Deeper View of Bank Cards Doesn't Improve Their Look," http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/ ocp/giftcards2007final.pdf, as well as earlier annual reports.
54. For information on the laws surrounding gift cards, see Daniel R. Horne, "Gift Cards: Disclosure One Step Removed," Journal of Consumer Affairs 41, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 341-50
55. Charles Owen Kile, Jr., "Accounting for Gift Cards," Journal of Accountancy, November 2007 (www.journalofaccountancy.com/Is sues/2007/Nov/AccountingForGiftCards.htm, accessed February 2, 2009).
56. The Cato Institute perspective is available in James A. Dom, "Ending Tax Socialism," Cato. org, September 13, 1996, http://www.cato.org/ pub_display.php?pub_id=6297, accessed August 26, 2008.
57. Information on marginal tax rates in the United States is obtained from the Congressional Budget Office report "Effective Marginal Tax Rates on Labor Income," November 2005 (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/68xx/doc6854/11-10-LaborTaxation.pdf, accessed August 26, 2008)
58. Emmanuel Saez, "Reported Incomes and Marginal Tax Rates, 1960-2000: Evidence and Policy Implications" (NBER Working Paper 10273, January 2004), at http://www.nber.org/papers/w10273.
59. The cost-benefit results are presented in "Results of Copenhagen Consensus, 2008," at http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default .aspx?ID=956, accessed August 25, 2008.
60. Data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics are available at http://nccsdataweb .urban.org/NCCS/Public/index.php, accessed August 25, 2008.
61. Data on total private U.S. giving are drawn from "Charitable Giving: Statistics and Trends," http://www.generousgiving.org/page .asp?sec=4&page=161#45, accessed August 25, 2008.
62. Results of the Deloitte Touche survey for 2007 are reported in "Deloitte 2007 Annual Holiday Survey," at http://public.deloitte.com/me dia/0001/US_2007_Holiday_spending.pdf.
63. Prices of naming opportunities were glimpsed at Lynchburg's "Naming Opportunities" (http:// www.lynchburg.edu/namingopps.xml, accessed August 20, 2008)
64. MIT's "Naming Opportunities List" (http://giving.mit.edu/ways/nam ing/list.html#scholarships, accessed August 20, 2008).
65. Information on Charity Navigator and charitygiftcertificates.org is available at http://www .charitynavigator.org/ and http://charitygiftcer tificates.org, respectively. For information on the Good Card
66. see Alan Kraus, "Gift Cards Go Philanthropic," New York Times, December 5, 2007, at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/technology/techspecial2/05card.html.