Ken Gordon wrote:  
>Samuel Bostaph wrote:  
>>  The implicit cost of such relations is,  
>>of course, what a man would have to pay a prostitute for those same  
>>services.  
>  
>  
>The GDP, of course, measures value added. Sex, at least in the form   
>discussed here, involves two people each of whom has an imputed   
>input cost paid to the other. The value added by the transaction is   
>zero.  
>  
  
  
To be serious for a minute, and not just be subject to eye-rolling:   
isn't this precisely where economics as a serious science displays   
that it fails -- because, if you want to measure true GDP and need to   
deal with imputed costs, you as an economist don't know whether to   
use the prostitute model, the reciprocal model, or the giglio model   
to impute the costs -- and you can't, unless you study the norms and   
customs and behaviors of society or, perhaps, of all the individuals   
in the society.  
  
And the problem with sex is only the example that makes obvious that   
other economists' uses of indirect indicators or theoretical   
assumptions simply has no assurance of accuracy.  
  
(The sex discussion goes back to Becker's sexism, or non-sexism, or   
arbitrary assumptions, as was discussed on this list a while ago.)  
  
(And, as I said in an earlier post, this is a non-economist speaking   
-- a non-economist who is a political theorist and so inevitably   
interested in economic issues.)  
  
Peter G. Stillman