Gift Giving III: David Friedman's explanations

This post by David Friedman on the gift giving topic (why people give gifts when simply giving cash instead appears to be the most efficient choice in most cases) is very interesting, hence I add his two explanations to the signalling hypothesis by Greg Mankiw, with the "wild self" connotation by Alex Tabarrok (however it appears that Tabarrok's wild self ran into trouble subsequently...that's what happens when you've got both a wild self and a wife).

The first explanation considered by Friedman also works via signalling, as method, except that here the motivating engine is the (general) altruism, not necessarily based on a strong interpersonal relationship (though I find it quite difficult to conceive of altruism without assuming a strong, special, type of relationship...). In a way, David Friedman's theory, which is based on the economics of altruism developed by Gary Becker, could be seen as more general. But here's a fragment from his post:

If I am an altruist with regard to you it is in my interest to be well informed about your preferences in order that I can recognize situations where I have an opportunity to confer a large benefit on you at a small cost to me. It is also, via Becker's Rotten Kid Theorem, in my interest for you to know that I am an altruist with regard to you, since that makes it in your interest to act altruistically towards me--loosely speaking, because the richer I am the more I will be able to help you.

[...]

If I am well informed about your preferences, it is relatively inexpensive for me to find a gift you will like. Hence giving a gift you will like meets the requirement for a signal of altruism--it is cheaper to send the signal if it is true than if it is false.

The second alternative considers a person made up of two selves, a short-run pleasure maximizer and a long term utility maximizer, and equates gift (instead of cash) giving to another person with showing that both selves of the giver care about the receiver. In my view, this explanation assumes a long term, most likely very strong, relationship, between the one who gives and the one who receives the gift and it is yet another form of signalling. In David Friedman's words:

Suppose we accept the plausible idea that I can be modeled as two individuals in one body. The first is a short run pleasure maximizer--the me that almost always wants an ice cream cone or another potato chip. The second is a long term utility maximizer--the me that promises not to have ice cream for desert until he has lost five pounds and tries to force the first me to keep the promise.

Most of us do not face an immediate budget constraint. Spending an extra few dollars on a gift doesn't mean that I can't afford an ice cream cone today, it means I will have a few dollars fewer when I retire. The long run me cares about that, but the short run me doesn't. Spending an extra hour shopping, on the other hand, is a cost that occurs now and so counts for both versions of me.

We now have a second explanation of gift giving. By giving you a gift instead of cash, I demonstrate that the short run me as well as the long run me cares about you.