"Re-Gifting" and the economics of exchange

"Re-gifting" is a term applied to giving someone else a gift of something you received as a gift but didn't really want. Here is an article from the Washington Post about the practice (free registration required).

I expect that opposition to the practice of re-gifting often results from the feeling that the giver didn't much care about the person who gave the gift or who is receiving the re-gift. The pure economics of exchange is not particularly helpful here. Most of the time I don't mind receiving gifts that are re-gifted if there is some semblance of thought and care in their selection. But most painful to me is the process of deciding whether to re-gift something I've received as a gift but which was clearly inappropriate. In such cases, I usually end up re-gifting the item to the Sally Ann.

My greatest joy in re-gifting involves some old slices of pizza that my son in Houston and I have re-exchanged at times.