Marketplace worked with me to produce this video about the economics of signalling in the workplace. They did a fantastic job, and you even get to hear my David Attenborough impression. The video is loosely based on one of the Dear Economist letters. Enjoy!

Joel Waldfogel, author of “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas”, has a book on the subject, “Scroogenomics“. Appropriately, it is a quintessential gift: beautifully presented but under the glorious exterior there’s not that much there: it’s about the size of a pocket diary. I’d guess it’s 20,000 words, tops…

I like it, though, having read the first half over breakfast. I’ll try to deliver a proper response in an appropriately-seasonal column.

If you want to see Waldfogel defend his thesis, go to the LSE on 3 December. I’ll be giving my own take on Waldfogel courtesy of the School of Life on 13 December - and I think Joel has it wrong. (But I’ll read on: he has thought about this a lot.) Here is my earlier take on Joel Waldfogel; here is the man himself.

Steven Landsburg, author of the original pop-econ book, the wonderful “The Armchair Economist”, is blogging in support of a new book, “The Big Questions: Tackling the problems of of philosophy with ideas from mathematics, economics and physics”. I expect he will infuriate everyone because that’s his style.

The blog is here. The first two posts are on healthcare reform (insurance is part of the problem: well said!) and on why Richard Dawkins is wrong about God.

With the imminent passing of my pet rat I am faced with a lot of grief; he has been a great pet and so I will be more saddened by his passing than if he had been a bad one. My question is: is it possible for the cost (the grief from losing a friend/pet/family member) to outweigh the benefit (the joy gained through time spent with them) and so make the purchase of my pet not worth it, as the net benefit would be negative? Would there be a point where you would say: “I don’t want to get involved because I love X so much that I will be destroyed if I lose him?”
Ilka

Dear Ilka,

Your intriguing problem has not, as far as I know, been explored by economists before, although it has been discussed by artists. Your ailing rat puts me in mind of a departed sparrow, mourned in verse by Catullus. Paul Simon expressed the trade-off more directly in his early song “I Am a Rock”: “If I never loved I never would have cried.”

But poetic speculation gets us nowhere. Let’s head straight to the data. Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick University, provides the following data points to ponder, based on surveys of life-satisfaction. Relative to never having been married, being married is worth 0.38 “points” of life satisfaction on a scale of 1-7. Being separated is worth -0.24, widowed -0.19 and divorced -0.09.

This is not much to go on, but it is better than nothing. If we incautiously interpret these numbers as causal – in fact they are merely correlations – then we could conclude that 20 years of marriage is compensation for up to 40 years of widowhood. Ten years of marriage more than justifies 40 years as a divorcee.

For human marriages, these odds seem pretty good. For a pet rat, less so: the little darlings hit puberty at six weeks and rarely live past three years. Perhaps you should buy a tortoise next time.

Questions to economist@ft.com

Here’s the hedgehog. Here’s the book. Thanks to NPR and Planet Money for inviting me on!

As the debate on healthcare drones on in the US, I have been struck by a heretical thought: the differences between the British National Health Service and the US healthcare system are not nearly as important as their shared weaknesses.

The difference between the two systems has been exaggerated of late. The uninsured in America are not barred from emergency rooms by security guards. The NHS has not assembled a death panel to do away with Stephen Hawking.

I’ve had experience of both systems. My wife’s life has been saved once by American doctors and once by British ones. One of my daughters was born in Washington, DC, the other in London. And I’ll admit that the systems feel very different. The outcomes are different, the bureaucracy works in a different way, the waiting times are different and the rules of access are different.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

After reading with interest your plan to start exercising last Christmas (by giving to charity if you didn’t meet your goals), I’d be obliged if you could offer an opinion on a similar scheme I have concocted. Wine is the problem. I drink too much of the glorious stuff, and am unable to convince myself that doing so is unhealthy.

Your idea of giving to charity would not work with me. I’m uncharitable, I’m afraid, and would probably rather lie than give my earnings away. Here is my alternative. Each month I will deposit the total amount I would spend on wine in the family joint bank account. If I want a bottle, it must come out of this account, but whatever is left at the end of the month is to be given to my wife and children.

This appears to be an excellent solution; in my view, the guilt of taking something away from my beloved wife and children is far greater than taking from myself. Do you agree?
DW

Dear DW,

In classical economic theory, your scheme would be useless. Every pound spent on the demon drink is always a pound unavailable to your wife and children, and it should make no difference which bank account you put it in.

But Richard Thaler, a leading behavioural economist, has a theory of “mental accounting” that supports your plan. We do attach different labels to different pounds: this one is for my pension, that one is slush money. And Thaler has discovered that those labels make a difference to the way we behave.

Your scheme may well work, then. But like all commitment strategies, there is a risk that it will backfire, and you end up with the worst of all worlds. You may find yourself unable to stop drinking, feel more guilty than ever, and demonstrate unambiguously to your family that you love booze more than you love them. You evidently like to live dangerously: good luck.

Send questions to economist@ft.com

At a recent conference on experimental economics, John List, professor of economics at the university of chicago, shared a beer with other delegates and opined, “I think I used to be the most hated guy in this field.” His drinking companions jovially assured him that he still was.

So why the sharp elbows from his colleagues? Quite simply, List’s attention to the nuts and bolts of experimental method has demolished some of the most cherished results in the cool field of behavioural economics.

Consider a class of experimental games much cited by those who dispute the classical model of rational economic choice. There is the “ultimatum” game, in which player A (Anna) is given $10 and asked how much, if any, she proposes to offer to player B (Bernard). Bernard can accept the offer, but if he rejects it, neither Anna nor Bernard get anything. If Anna and Bernard were rational income-maximisers, Anna would offer one cent and Bernard would accept it as better than nothing. This never happens, so Anna and Bernard are not rational income-maximisers.

The remainder of this article can be read here. Please post comments below.