My wife and I are expecting our first child and I thought it would be interesting to offer a sort of diary of observations related to economics and child rearing.
First observation related to the future. Up until a couple of months ago we believed that we still might have some sort of social life, babysitters permitting but since then we have come to doubt this rosy picture. So much so that we have been entertaining, going out to shows, the theatre and visting friends with an intensity that borders on the compulsive socialite.
Perhaps this is rational - after all, we may not get these same opportunities over the next year, so it’s right that we bring forward the spending to enjoy ourselves now.
But wait, even by our standards, our socialising has been excessive: we’ve seen more shows over a three week period than we saw in the first six months of this year, and we’ve spent EVERY weekend between May and September with friends, family or away. Is this really next year’s consumption, or even two or three years worth? I don’t know but I doubt it. If I really think about it, I know that we’ll get to enjoy time out as much as we do now (i.e. our ‘regular going out), so we appear to have over-consumed out of fear.
This little bit of introspection is one thing that makes me doubt Arnold Kling’s view that economic choices are unlikely to be made as a result of passions. Furthermore, where do you draw the line at an economic decision and non-economic? Fundamentally, making a decision implies a trade-off and use of resources, so all decisions are economic. In fact, my own view is that economics, in its widest sense has driven evolution. This is a trivial observation but seeing things this way does make it more difficult accept a simple dichotomy in neurology of emotional/non-economic and rational/economic.
For an interesting paper on fear and economics, see this paper.
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