Working Paper: NBER ID: w25610
Authors: Paul Dolfen; Liran Einav; Peter J. Klenow; Benjamin Klopack; Jonathan D. Levin; Laurence Levin; Wayne Best
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: E-commerce; Consumer Surplus; Convenience Gains; Variety Gains
JEL Codes: L81; L86; O33; O47
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| convenience gains from e-commerce (L81) | consumer spending (D12) |
| variety gains from e-commerce (L81) | consumer spending (D12) |
| higher-income cardholders (G51) | benefits from e-commerce (L81) |
| consumers in densely populated areas (R22) | benefits from e-commerce (L81) |
| e-commerce availability (L81) | consumer surplus (D46) |
| e-commerce spending (L81) | consumer surplus (D46) |
| distance to offline merchants (L81) | likelihood of purchasing online (L81) |