Barcodes and barcode scanners transformed the grocery industry in the 1970s. I use store-level data from the 1972, 1977, and 1982 Census of Retail Trade, matched to data on store scanner installations, to estimate scanners' effect on labor productivity. I find that early scanners increased a...

I estimate the aggregate income elasticity of Wal-Mart's and Target's revenues using quarterly data for 1997-2006. I find that Wal-Mart's revenues increase during bad times, whereas Target's revenues decrease, consistent with Wal-Mart selling "inferior goods" in the technical sense of the term....

Retail chains and imports of consumer goods from developing countries have grown sharply over the past 25 years. Wal-Mart's sales, which currently account for 15% of U.S. imports of consumer goods from China, grew 90-fold over this period, while U.S. imports from China increased 30-fold. We...

This note examines the instrumental variables method used by Neumark, Zhang, and Ciccarella (2005) to analyze Wal-Mart's effect on retail labor markets, and exposes major flaws in that methodology. Neumark, Zhang, and Ciccarella use an interaction between distance from Wal-Mart's headquarters...

This paper documents and explains the recent rise of "big box" general merchandisers. Data from the Census of Retail Trade for 1977-2007 show that general-merchandise chains grew much faster than specialist retail chains, and that general merchandisers that added the most stores also...

This paper documents and explains the recent rise of "big box" general merchandisers. Data from the Census of Retail Trade for 1977-2007 show that general-merchandise chains grew much faster than specialist retail chains, and that general merchandisers that added the most stores also...

By exploiting the uneven consolidation in the retail sector over the past few years we find that Chinese and other LDC imports are disproportionately sold by the largest retail firms. Smaller retailers sell almost as many imports but they are more likely to import from high-cost source...

We study the effect of increases in effective minimum wages on the prices of several fast-food items using quarterly city-level data from 1993-2014, a period during much of which the federal minimum wage declined in real value while state-level legislation flourished. For one product, a burger,...

Barcode scanners, introduced in the early 1970s, were a foundational process innovation in the grocery supply chain. By 1984 scanners had been installed in 10% of food stores in the U.S. Difference-in-difference analysis of city-level price data shows that scanners reduced prices of groceries by...

We analyze the effect of Wal-Mart's entry into the grocery market using a unique store-level price panel data set. We use OLS and two IV specifications to estimate the effect of Wal-Mart's entry on competitors' prices of 24 grocery items across several categories. Wal-Mart's price advantage over...