The Economics Of Ecstasy

William Watson writes:

If you think at all about the economics of love this Valentine’s week, you’ll probably think about the market for chocolate or roses or greeting cards — the industrial implications of romantic love and the material demands it creates. Organizers of the Carnival in Rio reportedly handed out 20 million free condoms last week. "Give me a thousand more latex futures at $43!"

But when we economists think about love, as we sometimes do, we usually have something else in mind.

Quick now, answer honestly! An 18-wheeler crosses the median and bears down on you. Do you swerve right and take the hit yourself ? Or do you swerve left and put your passenger in graver peril?

Ilya Beylin, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, analysed data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System Encyclopdia on the several hundred thousand fatal car accidents that took place in the United States between 1975 and 2006. He found that in accidents in which either the driver or front passenger died, the driver was four times more likely to die — 4.11 times to be exact –if the passenger was his or her spouse.

What could account for such behaviour? Well, it could be love or "love," as it’s referred to in economics articles. And 4.11 could be a measure of love, a driver’s willingness to sacrifice himself for his or her beloved. Of course, as Mr. Beylin points out, it’s only a measure for couples who got themselves into fatal accidents. Maybe if you really love her, the number would be even higher than 4.11. But because you do love her, you don’t take her out where there are 18-wheelers. In fact, maybe you don’t take her out at all. Maybe you stay at home and, well, you know, drive each other’s cars.

Another young economist, Hugo Mialon of Emory University in Atlanta, has a racy but fascinating paper called "The Economics of Ecstasy." In it he works through a plausible "game-theoretical" analysis of — prepare yourself — when and why people fake orgasms. The model isn’t simple; one page features a dozen lines of mathematical derivations. If you think mathematizing love is too crass for words, think again. Mr. Mialon, who did his undergraduate work at McGill, quotes Marguerite Duras (" It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most") among others, and proposes the reasonably sophisticated view that love is not mere altruism, but a mixture of altruism and possessiveness. People’s faking behaviour will be different, his theorems suggest, according to how possessive of one another they are. And they will be more possessive and more altruistic when they are in love.

We economists do have a reputation for believing all motivations come down to commercial considerations. (If money can’t buy you love, is love really worth having?) In reality, we’re perfectly open to the idea that human beings have all sorts of motivations. But we want to see love’s influence in the data. Does it make people behave differently than mere self-interest?