IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/luk/wpaper/8513.html

Is the 'Shop Around the Corner' a Luxury or a Nuisance? The relationship between income and neighborhood retail patterns

Author

Listed:
  • Jenny Schuetz
  • Jed Kolko
  • Rachel Meltzer

Abstract

Affluent neighborhoods present a potentially attractive location for retail establishments because of their higher purchasing power and demand for a wide range of specialized goods and services. However, if high income households perceive retail in general – or certain types of retail, such as Big Box stores – as an undesirable use, they may be able to block commercial development through zoning and the political process. In thispaper we shed light on these issues by examining the relationship betweenneighborhood income and several different types of retail presence for 58 large U.S metropolitan areas. We combine detailed data from the National Establishment TimeSeries database on retail establishments and employment, by industry category and firm type, with Census data on ZCTA income and demographics. Results indicate that retail density varies with income for certain retail types, such as food service and chain supermarkets and drugstores. In addition, average establishment size increases with income for all retail types. Retail density increases with population density, as expected, and decreases with distance to CBD and with share of owner-occupied housing.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Schuetz & Jed Kolko & Rachel Meltzer, 2010. "Is the 'Shop Around the Corner' a Luxury or a Nuisance? The relationship between income and neighborhood retail patterns," Working Paper 8513, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    • Handle: RePEc:luk:wpaper:8513
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://lusk.usc.edu/sites/default/files/working_papers/wp_2010_1005.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter Davis, 2006. "Spatial competition in retail markets: movie theaters," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 964-982, December.
    2. Emek Basker & Shawn Klimek & Pham Hoang Van, 2008. "Supersize It: The Growth of Retail Chains and the Rise of the "Big Box" Retail Format," Working Papers 0809, Department of Economics, University of Missouri, revised 30 Sep 2010.
    3. Waldfogel, Joel, 2008. "The median voter and the median consumer: Local private goods and population composition," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 567-582, March.
    4. Emin M. Dinlersoz, 2004. "Firm Organization and the Structure of Retail Markets," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(2), pages 207-240, June.
    5. Peter Davis, 2006. "Spatial competition in retail markets: movie theaters," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 964-982, December.
    6. McKinnish, Terra & Walsh, Randall & Kirk White, T., 2010. "Who gentrifies low-income neighborhoods?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 180-193, March.
    7. Lucia Foster & John Haltiwanger & C. J. Krizan, 2006. "Market Selection, Reallocation, and Restructuring in the U.S. Retail Trade Sector in the 1990s," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 748-758, November.
    8. Rachel Meltzer & Jenny Schuetz, 2010. "Bodegas or Bagel Shops? Neighborhood Differences in Retail & Household Services," Working Paper 33, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    9. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger, 1992. "Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction, and Employment Reallocation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 819-863.
    10. John Haltiwanger & Ron Jarmin & C. J. Krizan, 2010. "Mom-and-Pop Meet Big-Box: Complements or Substitutes?," NBER Chapters, in: Cities and Entrepreneurship, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jerry Hausman & Ephraim Leibtag, 2007. "Consumer benefits from increased competition in shopping outlets: Measuring the effect of Wal-Mart," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(7), pages 1157-1177.
    12. de Palma, Andre & Lindsey, Robin & von Hohenbalken, Balder & West, Douglas S., 1994. "Spatial price and variety competition in an urban retail market : A nested logit analysis," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 331-357, September.
    13. Edward L. Glaeser, Jed Kolko, and Albert Saiz, 2001. "Consumer city," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 27-50, January.
    14. Raphael W. Bostic & Richard W. Martin, 2003. "Black Home-owners as a Gentrifying Force? Neighbourhood Dynamics in the Context of Minority Home-ownership," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 40(12), pages 2427-2449, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rachel Meltzer & Jenny Schuetz, 2010. "Bodegas or Bagel Shops? Neighborhood Differences in Retail & Household Services," Working Paper 33, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    2. Cristina Mateos-Mora & María Rosa Herrera-Gutiérrez & Cristina González-Benítez, 2021. "The Impacts of Area-Based Policies on Essential Retail in Vulnerable Areas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-17, July.
    3. Rachel Meltzer & Jenny Schuetz, 2012. "Bodegas or Bagel Shops? Neighborhood Differences in Retail and Household Services," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 26(1), pages 73-94, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schuetz, Jenny & Kolko, Jed & Meltzer, Rachel, 2012. "Are poor neighborhoods “retail deserts”?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 269-285.
    2. Rachel Meltzer & Sean Capperis, 2017. "Neighbourhood differences in retail turnover: Evidence from New York City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(13), pages 3022-3057, October.
    3. Chenarides, Lauren & Richards, Timothy J. & Rutledge, Zachariah & Pender, John, 2025. "Dollar store impact on local labor markets and retail activity," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    4. Meltzer, Rachel & Ellen, Ingrid Gould & Li, Xiaodi, 2021. "Localized commercial effects from natural disasters: The case of Hurricane Sandy and New York City," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    5. Minjee Kim & Tingyu Zhou, 2021. "Does Restricting the Entry of Formula Businesses Help Mom-and-Pop Stores? The Case of Small American Towns With Unique Community Character," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 35(2), pages 157-173, May.
    6. O. Cem Ozturk & Sriram Venkataraman & Pradeep K. Chintagunta, 2016. "Price Reactions to Rivals’ Local Channel Exits," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(4), pages 588-604, July.
    7. Raffaella Sadun, 2015. "Does Planning Regulation Protect Independent Retailers?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(5), pages 983-1001, December.
    8. Butt, Moeen Naseer & Baig, Ahmed S., 2024. "Assessing the firm-level financial consequences of clustering," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    9. Allen Tran, 2014. "The Aggregate Impact Of Online Retail," Working Papers 14-23, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    10. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Ross, Stephen L., 2015. "Change and Persistence in the Economic Status of Neighborhoods and Cities," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1047-1120, Elsevier.
    11. Schuetz, Jenny, 2015. "Why are Walmart and Target Next-Door neighbors?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 38-48.
    12. Maican, Florin & Orth, ´Matilda, 2013. "Entry Regulations, Product Differentiation and Determinants of Market Structure," Working Paper Series 984, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    13. John Haltiwanger & Ron Jarmin & C. J. Krizan, 2010. "Mom-and-Pop Meet Big-Box: Complements or Substitutes?," NBER Chapters, in: Cities and Entrepreneurship, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Brianna Cardiff-Hicks & Francine Lafontaine & Kathryn Shaw, 2015. "Do Large Modern Retailers Pay Premium Wages?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 68(3), pages 633-665, May.
    15. Kosová, Renáta & Lafontaine, Francine, 2012. "Much ado about chains: A research agenda," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 303-308.
    16. Zhou, Tingyu & Clapp, John M., 2015. "The location of new anchor stores within metropolitan areas," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 87-107.
    17. Cho, Janghee & Chun, Hyunbae & Lee, Yoonsoo, 2015. "How does the entry of large discount stores increase retail employment? Evidence from Korea," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 559-574.
    18. John M. Clapp & Stephen L. Ross & Tingyu Zhou, 2019. "Retail Agglomeration and Competition Externalities: Evidence from Openings and Closings of Multiline Department Stores in the U.S," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(1), pages 81-96, January.
    19. Alessandro Bonanno & Stephan J. Goetz, 2012. "WalMart and Local Economic Development," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 26(4), pages 285-297, November.
    20. Kaplan, David S., 2009. "Job creation and labor reform in Latin America," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 91-105, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:luk:wpaper:8513. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Steins The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Chris Steins to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lcuscus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.