After outlining characteristics of Japan's distribution sector, a comprehensive international comparison of it to those of other nations is presented and analyzed for underlying differences. This leads to an explanation of Japan's retail store density, which is then related to the structure of...

Does entry regulation hinder job creation? We investigate this question in the context of the French retail industry, a sector that has experienced especially low rates of job creation over the last 25 years. Since the early 70s, the French government has required regional zoning board approval...

Regulations aimed at curbing the entry of large retail stores have been introduced in many countries to protect independent retailers. Analyzing a planning reform launched in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, I show that independent retailers were actually harmed by the creation of entry barriers...

We argue in this paper that retailers can strategically position store brands in product space to strengthen their bargaining position when negotiating supply terms with manufacturers of national brands. Using a bargaining framework we model a retailer's decision whether to carry an additional...

Applications for new businesses from the U.S. Census Bureau's monthly and weekly Business Formation Statistics (BFS) fell substantially in the early stages of the pandemic but then surged in the second half of 2020. This surge has continued through May 2021. The pace of applications since...

Using an administrative payroll dataset for 2.6 million retail workers, we find that the staggered rollout of a major e-commerce firm's fulfillment centers reduces traditional retail workers' income in geographically proximate counties by 2.4%. Wages of hourly workers, especially part-time...

Using Visa debit and credit card transactions in the U.S. from 2016 to 2019, we document the importance of customers in accounting for sales variation across merchants, across stores within retail chains, and over time for individual merchants and stores. Customers, as opposed to transactions...

Sellers of new products are faced with having to guess demand conditions to set price appropriately. But sellers are able to adjust price over time and to learn from past mistakes. Additionally, it is not necessary that all goods be sold with certainty. It is sometimes better to set a high price...

We explore the effect of e-cigarette taxes enacted in eight states and two large counties on e-cigarette prices, e-cigarette sales, and sales of other tobacco products. We use the Nielsen Retail Scanner data from 2011 to 2017, comprising approximately 35,000 retailers nationally. We calculate a...

The rise in national industry concentration in the US between 1977 and 2013 is driven by a new industrial revolution in three broad non-traded sectors: services, retail, and wholesale. Sectors where national concentration is rising have increased their share of employment, and the expansion is...