What is the effect of e-commerce on the geographic distribution of local sales tax revenues? Using COVID-19 as a shock to online shopping and hand-collected high-frequency data on local sales tax revenue, we document an important shift in the state and local public finance landscape. As...

Rapid growth in e-commerce has altered the ability of jurisdictions to enforce commodity taxes on a destination basis. This results in different effective tax rates depending on the way in which goods and services are purchased and the characteristics of both the products and the sellers. We...

Taxing consumption in the digital economy poses unique challenges for fiscal authorities. Recent institutional reforms, such as states changing remittance rules for the sales and use tax following the Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, were enacted in order to increase tax...

If online transactions are tax-free, increased online shopping may lower tax rates as jurisdictions seek to reduce tax avoidance; but, if online firms remit taxes, online sales may put upward pressure on tax rates because internet sales help enforce destination-based taxes. I find that higher...

Requiring firms, rather than individuals, to remit sales taxes improves tax compliance. In the U.S., this shift toward firm-based remittance rules for remote purchases occurred gradually after South Dakota v. Wayfair. Using comprehensive and high-frequency local sales tax revenue data, we show...

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pro-sociality among individuals? After the onset of the pandemic, many charitable appeals were updated to include a reference to COVID-19. Did donors increase their giving in response to such changes? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a...

This paper investigates the direct and indirect effects of others' beliefs on respondents' own beliefs and consumer sentiment. Conducting consumer surveys with randomized control trials (RCTs) in Thailand and Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic, we implement two information treatments. Both...

We estimate the impact of Covid-induced working from home (WFH) on offline consumer spending in urban agglomerations. Our analysis draws on postcode-level data on card transactions and WFH patterns in major German cities between January 2019 and May 2022. We address endogeneity in WFH uptake by...

This study documents the existence and prevalence of the “review updating” phenomenon, where consumers change the ratings and content of their existing reviews, and examines its implications for platforms and businesses. Using both primary and secondary data, a dataset comprising 3 million...

We provide an explanation for a frequently observed vertical restraint in ecommerce, namely that brand manufacturers partially or completely prohibit that retailers distribute their high-quality products over the internet. Our analysis is based on the assumption that a consumer's purchasing...