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Online Commerce, Inter-Regional Retail Trade, and the Evolution of Gravity Effects: Evidence from 20 Billion Transactions

Author

Listed:
  • David Bounie

    (IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, ECOGE - Economie Gestion - I3 SES - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation de Telecom Paris - Télécom ParisTech - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, SES - Département Sciences Economiques et Sociales - Télécom ParisTech)

  • Youssouf Camara
  • John Galbraith

Abstract

This paper investigates interregional retail trade linkages, and changes in the gravity effects between cities and regions arising from online commerce, as opposed to traditional point-of-sale commerce. We build original interregional retail trade measures from nearly 20 billion domestic consumer online and in-store transactions made through bank cards, in France 2018-19. We are able to study the mobility of individual bank card holders throughout France, their on-site purchases, and also the locations from which their online purchases were made. We find evidence that online consumer expenditure tends to be more heavily concentrated in the already-large regional economies. This result suggests that the increasing movement toward online purchasing may tend to increase the concentration of overall economic activity, and may have important implications for regional economic development.

Suggested Citation

  • David Bounie & Youssouf Camara & John Galbraith, 2020. "Online Commerce, Inter-Regional Retail Trade, and the Evolution of Gravity Effects: Evidence from 20 Billion Transactions," Working Papers hal-02864695, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02864695
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02864695
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Keywords

    Consumption expenditure; Consumer mobility; Gravity model; Inter-regional trade; E-commerce;
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