Does Wal-Mart Sell Inferior Goods?

Emek Basker

No 805, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Missouri

Abstract: I estimate the aggregate income elasticity of Wal-Mart's and Target's revenues using quarterly data for 1997-2006. I find that Wal-Mart's revenues increase during bad times, whereas Target's revenues decrease, consistent with Wal-Mart selling "inferior goods" in the technical sense of the term. An upper bound on the aggregate income elasticity of demand for Wal-Mart's wares is -0.5.

Keywords: Retail; Wal-Mart; Target; Inferior Goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pgs.
Date: 2008-04-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Economic Inquiry 2011

Downloads: (external link)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZwjWs5QCMMUernUqW ... KYs/view?usp=sharing (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: DOES WAL‐MART SELL INFERIOR GOODS? (2011)
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:umc:wpaper:0805

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Missouri Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chao Gu ().