The impact of government support on rural grocery stores—A regression discontinuity approach

Cecilia Hammarlund and Martin Nordin

Journal of Regional Science, 2025, vol. 65, issue 1, 156-188

Abstract: We evaluate a place‐based policy aimed at commercial service providers. In 2016, the Swedish government introduced special operating support for grocery stores in remote rural areas to slow down the process of store closures. We estimate the local causal effect in a regression discontinuity design framework using the fact that only stores located at least 15 km away from another store were eligible for the support. The results indicate a 15%–20% increase in store survival rates due to the support. For surviving stores, the effects on employment are negative, possibly due to labor‐saving investments.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jors.12735

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jregsc:v:65:y:2025:i:1:p:156-188

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0022-4146

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Regional Science is currently edited by Marlon G. Boarnet, Matthew Kahn and Mark D. Partridge

More articles in Journal of Regional Science from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().