FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 21, 2024
CONTACT: Tommy Jaime, 608-265-6175, tjaime@lafollette.wisc.edu
MADISON, Wis., – While much has been written about the connection between dogs and humans, a new book coauthored by David L. Weimer of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Madison–Wisconsin is among the first to use an economic lens to consider the uniqueness of this interspecies relationship.
Although we have come to primarily view our dogs as family, Dog Economics: Perspectives on Our Canine Relationships examines their role as both family and property. The book, released this month and coauthored by Weimer and Aidan R. Vining of Simon Fraser University, takes a novel approach in that it applies foundational economic concepts to our relationship with dogs.
Weimer and Vining call this approach “dogonomics.” Through this lens, the phenomenon of puppies adopted during the COVID pandemic can be understood as both the increased value of companionship and lower opportunity costs of caring for dogs when people were isolated in their homes. Family economics helps explain how dogs can be used as complements to, or even substitutes for, children. Predatory and harmful puppy mills can be viewed in terms of market failures due to information asymmetry and negative externalities. Increasing demand for dog breeds featured in popular culture can be explained by the economic theory of fads.
“My interest here grew out of my effort to help economists value reductions in canine mortality resulting from regulations, such as those intended to improve the quality of pet food,” Weimer said. “I was fortunate to work with a team of former students to develop an estimate of the value of statistical dog life like the value of statistical life used to value reductions in human mortality.”
Dog Economics also traces the historical development of the close human-canine association, which goes back more than twenty thousand years to when humans began domesticating dogs for use in hunting, standing guard, and providing warmth and companionship. The companionship piece grew when dogs moved with humans to cities. Yet, even the most personal aspects of this deep relationship developed over millennia can be better understood from an economic perspective. For example, simple game theory offers insight into the prevailing origin stories around this co-evolution.
Strictly modern phenomena can also be viewed through the lens of dogonomics. Difficult end-of-life decisions like euthanasia and heroic medical care invite a principal-agent framework to explore the implications of such challenging ethical considerations. Meanwhile, the rapidly expanding pet insurance market could result in moral hazard that leads to excessive and risky heroic care.
“Aidan Vining and I very much enjoyed writing this introduction to dogonomics,” Weimer said. “We hope it will stimulate economists to join the many other disciplines that contribute to understanding interspecies relationships. Catonomics anyone?”
A faculty member of the La Follette School of Public Affairs since 2000, Weimer is the Edwin E. Witte Professor of Political Economy and a leading scholar focusing on public policy craft, institutional design, and cost-benefit analysis. Before Dog Economics, he wrote Medical Governance: Values, Expertise, and Interests in Organ Transplantation and Behavioral Economics for Cost-Benefit Analysis. He also co-authored Organizational Report Cards and Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice.
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About the La Follette School of Public Affairs
The Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is a leading academic institution with a 40-year history of improving the design, implementation, and evaluation of public policy and the practice of governance. The school was built on the foundation of the UW–Madison Center for the Study of Public Policy and Administration, which was established in 1967 under the Department of Political Science. In 1983, the Wisconsin Legislature formally separated the center from the Department of Political Science. The school officially opened in 1984, now named after Robert M. La Follette, former Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator regarded as one of the most celebrated figures in the state’s history. Today, the La Follette School offers domestic and international master’s degrees in public affairs as well as certificates for undergraduate students. La Follette School faculty, alumni, students, and staff extend the practice of the Wisconsin Idea across the state and around the world through research and outreach that inspires evidence-based policymaking, impacts society’s pressing problems, and advances the public good.
