When I’m not writing, I am a family economist/behavioral economist. The philosophy behind both of those is that I study the use of time, money, and other resources — in household units and in a manner that accounts for psychology.

Running Valentine’s Day through the economics filter yields interesting results.

Take, for example, Valentine’s Day as a method of conspicuous consumption, and the role of social media in creating the conspicuous part. Today, people will post pictures of flowers, restaurant meals, and possibly engagement rings or jewelry. The gifts may be given from the heart; the need to post pictures on Facebook and Instagram comes from a desire for the world to know the value of the item. 

Or for that matter, Valentine’s Day as an exploration of assortative mating. This is an economic concept borrowed from sociology that posits that people get sorted into couples based on complementary resources and similarity of levels of resources. Thus the stereotype that the rich man gets the trophy wife — there’s a little truth to the stereotype, according to the assortative mating theory. So, in effect, we don’t marry someone out of our league — we marry someone that complements us. And we marry as much for their resources combined with ours as we do love and romance.

And let’s not even mention that chocolate in a heart-shaped box costs much more coming up to Valentine’s Day than it does the day after. That’s pure supply and demand. 

I take advantage of this last economic fact by celebrating Half Price Chocolate Day tomorrow.