The Impact of Dollar Store Restrictions on Food-at-Home Retail

This paper provides the first national evidence on how local zoning policies aimed at limiting dollar store growth affect the structure of neighborhood food-at-home retail. Using ZIP-code-level panel data from 2012–2023 and a generalized synthetic control method, I estimate the effects of moratoriums, special-exception, prohibited-use policies, and an any-restriction policy indicator that captures exposure to any one of these policy types. To reduce spillover and treatment-misclassification concerns, the analysis excludes untreated ZIP codes adjacent to treated ZIP codes and ZIP codes spanning multiple municipalities. The results show that any-restriction policies reduce dollar-store counts by 0.127 stores per ZIP, or about 11.1 percent relative to the sample mean, while increasing small grocery stores by 0.483 stores. Moratoriums increase small grocery stores nationally but reduce them in urban-cluster areas. Special-exception policies reduce dollar-store counts and increase small grocery stores overall, in urban ZIP codes, and especially in rural ZIP codes. They also increase medium grocery stores in urban-cluster ZIP codes. Overall, the findings show that local land-use rules can reshape food-at-home retail access and market competition in meaningful, policy-relevant ways.