 Price dispersion across U.S. cities: The role of WalmartMd Rafayet Alam and Akm Morshed Economic Analysis and Policy, 2021, vol. 71, issue C, 227-237 Abstract: This study examines the effect of Walmart on price dispersion across US cities. Although US retail architecture has been changed over the past two decades by the expansion of big-box chain-stores such as Walmart, the impact of such market consolidation on price dispersion is not examined rigorously. Using opening/conversion dates of Walmart and good-specific quarterly retail prices for 101 US cities over 25 years, we examine the role of Walmart on price dispersion across US cities. Our analysis shows that price dispersion in a city-pair increases when Walmart enters one of the cities in the pair. When Walmart enters the other city of the city-pair, price dispersion falls from that increased level but the fall is not enough to bring the price dispersion back to the level where there is no Walmart in the city-pair. This finding implies that Walmart drives down prices in ‘early’ cities more than in ‘late’ cities and that prevalence of big-box stores may be one of the reasons for price dispersion across cities. Keywords: Price dispersion; Walmart; US cities (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:71:y:2021:i:c:p:227-237 DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2021.04.016 Access Statistics for this article Economic Analysis and Policy is currently edited by Clevo Wilson More articles in Economic Analysis and Policy from Elsevier |
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