The perfect seasonal present for economists arrived in today's post – Joel Waldfogel's Scroogenomics. It sets out the economic case for not buying gifts, which of course are highly inefficient. If resources must be transferred, cash is best. The waste in the US, according to Waldfogel, starts with the $66bn of satisfaction which costs $78bn to buy, and then you have to add on the costs of time and shoeleather (or whatever the online equivalent is).

This is all done in a very lighthearted way, and leads Waldfogel to recommend (on a more serious note) that one gives either gift cards or charity christmas gifts, that is, spending the money that would have gone on a gift on say a goat or bicycle for a village in Kenya instead.

I enjoyed the book, and it's another of those very appealing and nicely produced small books (this one with a sensible sub-$10 price). I particularly liked the cover picture: how, one wonders, did they get the child to cry so appealingly? However, I do profoundly disagree with the moral.

Whenever I've received a notional goat, it's annoyed me. Surely, I think, people shouldn't use the pretext of giving me a 'present' to make their charitable donations. Charitable giving is something we should be doing anyway. Presents at Christmas have an entirely different function, namely the tangible expression of social and familial bonds. My feeling (and this is especially for any of my friends and family who happen to be reading) is that gifts will afford me more pleasure than it will cost the giver to buy them, even if I wouldn't have chosen it for myself. And added to that is the pleasure I derive myself from giving presents to others.

So nice try, Prof Waldfogel, and I hope lots of people buy your book as a nicely ironic stocking filler.