IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v40y2002i3p415-427.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gifts, Cash, and Stigma

Author

Listed:
  • Joel Waldfogel

    (Department of Business and Public Policy, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6372.)

Abstract

Each year individuals in the United States transfer between $50 and $72 billion in resources in the form of noncash holiday gifts, despite the fact that holiday gift recipients apparently value their noncash gifts at about 10% less than the prices paid by the givers. We document that cash giving is more likely from givers who tend to give unwanted gifts, indicating that givers are concerned with the utility of their recipients. The rarity of cash gifts can be rationalized by a stigma of cash giving that we are able to parameterize and estimate using a simple structural model. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Joel Waldfogel, 2002. "Gifts, Cash, and Stigma," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(3), pages 415-427, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:40:y:2002:i:3:p:415-427
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Khouja, Moutaz & Pan, Jingming & Zhou, Jing, 2016. "Effects of gift cards on optimal order and discount of seasonal products," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(1), pages 159-173.
    2. Kaplan, Todd R. & Ruffle, Bradley J., 2009. "In search of welfare-improving gifts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 445-460, May.
    3. Chen, Xi, 2011. "Accounting for social spending escalation in rural China," IAMO Forum 2011: Will the "BRICs Decade" Continue? – Prospects for Trade and Growth 6, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO).
    4. Alexander L. Brown & Jonathan Meer & J. Forrest Williams, 2019. "Why Do People Volunteer? An Experimental Analysis of Preferences for Time Donations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(4), pages 1455-1468, April.
    5. Birg, Laura & Pommeranz, Simon, 2018. "The deadweight loss of christmas - Reply," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 361, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    6. David R. Mandel, 2006. "Economic Transactions among Friends," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 50(4), pages 584-606, August.
    7. Zhang, Qinhong & Zhang, Dali & Segerstedt, Anders & Luo, Jianwen, 2018. "Optimal ordering and pricing decisions for a company issuing product-specific gift cards," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 92-102.
    8. Monique M H Pollmann & Ilja van Beest, 2013. "Women Are Better at Selecting Gifts than Men," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-6, December.
    9. Principe, Kristine E. & Eisenhauer, Joseph G., 2009. "Gift-giving and deadweight loss," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 215-220, March.
    10. Shibly, Sirajul A. & Chatterjee, Subimal, 2020. "Surprise rewards and brand evaluations: The role of intrinsic motivation and reward format," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 39-48.
    11. Vic Benuyenah, 2021. "Face-saving and Seasonal Gifts: Analysis of Cultural Exchanges in the Confucian Market Place," International Review of Management and Marketing, Econjournals, vol. 11(2), pages 59-66.
    12. Monique M. H. Pollmann & Ilja van Beest, 2013. "Women are Better at Selecting Gifts than Men," Working Papers id:5614, eSocialSciences.
    13. Huang, Wei & Rhee, S. Ghon & Suzuki, Katsushi & Yasutake, Taeko, 2022. "Do investors value shareholder perks? Evidence from Japan," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:40:y:2002:i:3:p:415-427. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.