In his 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens painted this picture of his central character, Ebenezer Scrooge: "The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice."
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Scrooge's frozen heart eventually thawed, after he was visited by the Ghosts of Christmas.
Givers in fact receive a 'warm glow' from giving. Economists appear to have undergone a similar transformation.
In his 2009 book, Scroogenomics: Why you shouldn't buy presents for the holidays, US economist Joseph Waldfogel decried the "orgy of wealth destruction" that occurs each Christmas.
Why? Because only you know your true preferences and what goods or services will maximise your happiness for a given sum of money. If I value socks at $5, but you spend $15 buying them for me, that's $10 gone up in smoke.
Better instead that you give me $15 cash and I'll buy something I truly value for that sum. Anything else is just a "dead weight loss" to the economy.
As a bit of end of year fun, the Economic Society of Australia repeated the survey here and found Aussie economists are, on average, less Scroogey than their American counterparts, with three in four disagreeing with the statement.
Our warm-hearted Aussie economists advance several arguments why you should still rush to the shops this festive season.
First, you are not just buying a product for consumption. You are also purchasing a signal to your friends and family that you love and respect them, deepening your bonds of trust and reciprocity.
Second, you yourself may experience pleasure from the act of gift giving. Third, it is possible you will buy something your loved one didn't know existed.
Fourth, you could buy them something they wouldn't otherwise purchase, due to guilt or embarrassment.
Generally, however, the male economists' responses seem to boil down to some variation of "if I didn't buy Christmas gifts, my wife would hit me/leave me".
But whether you believe gift giving is efficient or not, there's nothing wrong with trying to maximise the efficiency of your gifts. So here are some tips from economists to maximise your festive spirit (and the economy's efficiency, while you're at it).
First, for people whose preferences you don't know very well, give cash or gift cards. Buy a fancy envelope or card, if you must.
Second, get your loved one to tell you what they want. Better yet, drop some hints on what you would like.
Third, don't spend too much. That way, you minimise the potential dead-weight loss from your gift.
Fourth, give something that you would also like to use. If they really love you, they'll share.
Fifth, buy something you too would get some enjoyment out of them using.
Of course, the world would be a better place if economists more regularly acknowledged the limitation of their models.
So first prize goes to the reasoning employed by economist Rana Roy, who rejected the implicit assumption in the statement that people buy gifts for each other at all.
"As every child knows, 'we' do not give Christmas presents - Santa does. And it would, I think, be presumptuous of us to advise him.
Rather, let us be grateful for what we receive. Merry Christmas to one and all!"
