From Marginal Revolution:
Single people report feelings of inadequacy, anxiety.
People in relationships suffer from the tyranny of expectations. Good
experiences are met with hedonic adaptation, bad experiences can be, I’m
reliably informed, remembered for decades.
Florists, restaurateurs, etc., demand – and receive – excess producer surplus for their services.
For years, my solution has been to randomly select a surprise
Valentine’s day substitute. Our private utility is well served (the wife
loves the arrangement), and as a bonus I think I am minimizing the
negative consumption externality.
In my estimation, 1 and 2 outweigh 3, resulting in a deadweight
loss. I’m not a naive utilitarian; yes, I understand there is value in
signaling, and, believe it or not, I’m a romantic. I just think that by
coordinating this behavior in holiday form we suffer on both demand side
(expectations, zero-sum positional goods) and supply (constraints in
providing flowers, restaurant tables).
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