Assessing the Gains from E-Commerce / Paul Dolfen, Liran Einav, Peter J. Klenow, Benjamin Klopack, Jonathan D. Levin, Laurence Levin, Wayne Best.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dolfen, Paul.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Einav, Liran.

Klenow, Peter J.

Klopack, Benjamin.

Levin, Jonathan D.

Levin, Laurence.

Best, Wayne.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25610.

NBER working paper series no. w25610

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

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, yielding consumers the equivalent of a 1% permanent boost to their consumption, or over $1,000 per household. While some of the gains arose from saving travel costs of buying from local merchants, most of the gains stemmed from substituting to online merchants. Higher income cardholders gained more, as did consumers in more densely populated counties.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2019.