Calendrier du 03 janvier 2017
Du 03/01/2017 de 12:45 à 13:45
Campus Jourdan - Salle 8
DELESALLE Esther (Univeristé de Cergy Pontoise)
Education Benefits and Labor Market Distribution of Universal Primary Education Program: Evidence from Tanzania
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 03/01/2017 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
JARAVEL Xavier (Stanford University)
The Unequal Gains from Product Innovations: Evidence from the US Retail Sector
Using detailed product-level data in the retail sector in the United States from 2004 to 2013, this paper shows that product innovations disproportionately benefited high-income households due to increasing inequality and the endogenous response of supply to market size. Annualized quality-adjusted inflation was 0.65 percentage points lower for high-income households, relative to low-income households. Using national and local changes in market size driven by demographic trends plausibly exogenous to supply factors, the paper provides causal evidence that a shock to the relative demand for goods (1) affects the direction of product innovations, and (2) leads to a decrease in the relative price of the good for which demand became relatively larger (i.e. the long-term supply curve is downward sloping). A calibration shows that this channel explains most of the observed difference in quality-adjusted inflation rates across the income distribution.