Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website

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My guest today is Viviana Zellazar, the Lloyd Kotzen Professor of Sociology at Princeton

University. Her most recent book is The Purchase of Inemiesy from Princeton University Press,

a look at money and relationships and how they conflict and complement each other. Viviana

Welcome to Econ Talk. I'm delighted to be here. Viviana, our culture has areas where the

use of money in relationships is totally encouraged and take it for granted. So if I go to the

grocery and I pay money and the grocer gives me some food, whether it's a chain or my local

corner grocer, we all understand that relationship is a monetary relationship. There's no discomfort

there and I may have a friendly relationship with that grocer, but the fact that there's

money involved, we don't think twice about it. But let's take another case where food is

involved and let's suppose my wife just had a baby and a neighbor brings over a meal

as a way to help us get through this challenge of having a newborn in the house and I offer

to pay for it. Now in that situation, which I would be horrified to do, my neighbor would

be horrified, in that situation money is somehow out of bounds. Our culture would frown

on the use of money in that setting and we treat those relationships very differently

even though they're both about food and react to that example.

I know that's a wonderful example of the sort of differentiation that purchase of intimacy

tries to make. The first question is, why does that difference exist and why do we feel

...