What is the effect of e-commerce on the geographic distribution of local sales tax revenues? Using COVID-19 as a shock to online shopping and hand-collected high-frequency data on local sales tax revenue, we document an important shift in the state and local public finance landscape. As...

This paper examines the evolution of public policies before the scheduled political elections based on the government responses to the Covid pandemic. The results of an event study in a sample of countries that experienced political elections during the first year of the pandemic suggest that...

This paper examines how households adjusted their consumption behavior in response to COVID-19 infection risk during the early phase of the pandemic. We use a monthly consumption survey specifically designed by the German Statistical Office covering the second wave of COVID-19 infections from...

We estimate the impact of Covid-induced working from home (WFH) on offline consumer spending in urban agglomerations. Our analysis draws on postcode-level data on card transactions and WFH patterns in major German cities between January 2019 and May 2022. We address endogeneity in WFH uptake by...

If online transactions are tax-free, increased online shopping may lower tax rates as jurisdictions seek to reduce tax avoidance; but, if online firms remit taxes, online sales may put upward pressure on tax rates because internet sales help enforce destination-based taxes. I find that higher...

Taxing consumption in the digital economy poses unique challenges for fiscal authorities. Recent institutional reforms, such as states changing remittance rules for the sales and use tax following the Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, were enacted in order to increase tax...

Requiring firms, rather than individuals, to remit sales taxes improves tax compliance. In the U.S., this shift toward firm-based remittance rules for remote purchases occurred gradually after South Dakota v. Wayfair. Using comprehensive and high-frequency local sales tax revenue data, we show...

We evaluate the quality of beliefs elicited from online respondents, comparing several characteristics of two widely used elicitation mechanisms (the Binarized Scoring Rule - BSR - and a stochastic variation of the Becker-deGroot-Marshak mechanism -BDM) against a flat fee baseline for a variety...

We conduct an experiment where subjects read online news articles and are shown ads for brands next to those articles. Using eye-tracking technology, we measure the attention that each individual devotes to each article and ad. Then, respondents choose between cash or vouchers for the brands...

We provide an explanation for a frequently observed vertical restraint in ecommerce, namely that brand manufacturers partially or completely prohibit that retailers distribute their high-quality products over the internet. Our analysis is based on the assumption that a consumer's purchasing...