NEWS
Columbia University Paper on E-Commerce’s Impact on Welfare Published Using Rakuten Institute of Technology Data
On December 1st, Professor David E. Weinstein at Columbia University presented a paper using data provided by the Rakuten Institute of Technology at the Conference on Urban and Regional Economics held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, USA.
Paper Title: The Impact of E-Commerce on Urban Prices and Welfare
Authors: Yoon J. Jo, Misaki Matsumura, and David E. Weinstein
In the paper presented, David and co-authors estimate the impact of e-commerce on Japanese prices and welfare. They examine three possible channels through which this may happen. First, e-commerce may have lowered prices by driving down the average prices of goods available online. Second, e-commerce may enable consumers to purchase goods from other regions. Third, e-commerce can arbitrage intercity price differences. They find that all three channels produced significant welfare gains in Japan, suggesting that the advent of e-commerce has had important positive impacts on Japanese consumers.
It is great to see that the data we provide can help produce high quality research like this, and we hope that the future brings many more great papers. If you want to read more, you can download the paper through the link below.
