Millions of people are spending time and money on virtual goods: clothes for their characters in online hangouts, weapons for their fighters in massively-multiplayer games, and presents for their friends in social networking platforms. In this dissertation, I locate virtual goods as the latest...

China has quickly become the largest e-commerce market in the world. By matching a nationally representative China Family Panel Studies survey with county-level e-commerce information obtained from Alibaba, this paper examines how e-commerce development has shaped household consumption growth in...

Using COVID-19 as a sudden negative mobility shock in consumption accessibility, we show that the ability to shift to online consumption as an alternative to physical visits to brick-and-mortar stores disproportionately benefits younger people. Employing credit card transaction data linked to...

Using COVID-19 as a sudden negative mobility shock in consumption accessibility, we show that the ability to shift to online consumption as an alternative to physical visits to brick-and-mortar stores disproportionately benefits younger people. Employing credit card transaction data linked to...