In the world of omnichannel retail, some brands open a flagship store at online marketplaces, while others avert it. Focusing on a large e-commerce platform, we empirically study how flagship entry affects consumers, the platform, and various sellers on the platform

We examine manufacturers' decisions of whether and how to offer their products for sale over the internet. Manufacturers that rely on promotion of their products by brick and mortar retailers must consider the possibility that internet retailers can free ride off of that promotional effort. This...

We examine the economies of density associated with the expansion of Amazon's distribution network from 2006 to 2018. We demonstrate that, in placing a fulfillment center in a new state, Amazon faces a trade-off between the revenue implications of exposing local customers to sales tax on their...

Online prices are increasingly being used for a variety of inflation measurement and research applications, yet little is know about their relation to prices collected offline, where most retail transactions take place. This paper presents the results of the first large-scale comparison of...

We study e-commerce across 47 economies and 26 industries during the COVID-19 pandemic using aggregated and anonymized transaction-level data from Mastercard, scaled to represent total consumer spending. The share of online transactions in total consumption increased more in economies with...

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...

This paper estimates the magnitude and distribution of surplus from the knowledge worker gig economy using data from an online labor market. Labor demand elasticities determine workers' wages, and buyers' past market experience shapes both their job posting frequency and hiring rates. We find...

E-Commerce represents a rapidly growing share of consumer spending in the U.S. We use transactions-level data on credit and debit cards from Visa, Inc. between 2007 and 2017 to quantify the resulting consumer surplus. We estimate that E-Commerce spending reached 8% of consumption by 2017,...

The emergence of third-party online platforms in intermediating financial products has been a new and exciting development in FinTech. In China, the platforms are allowed to distribute mutual funds since 2012, and have quickly grown into a formidable presence. Examining the economic impact of...

I study the positive relationship between prices of tradable goods and per-capita income. I develop a highly tractable general equilibrium model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and non-homothetic consumer preferences that positively links prices of tradables to consumer income....