We would like to invite you to participate in Management Engineering (ME) Seminar.

1. When: November 22nd (Thursday), 16:00 ~ 17:30
2. Where: Building 9, 7th #9705
3. Speaker: Lee, Yoonsoo Ph.D. (Sogang University)
4. Topic: Diffusion of E-Commerce and Retail Job Apocalypse: Evidence from Credit Card Data on Online Spending
5. Research field: Managerial Economics
* Lecture will be delivered in English.

Abstract:
A rapid growth of e-commerce is widely blamed for job losses in traditional offline retail. We construct a unique measure of online spending share based on 30 billion transactions of credit cards. Using geographic variation in online spending shares, we examine the causal effect of e-commerce on retail employment at the county level. We find that the rise in online spending share from 2011 to 2015 decreases the county-level retail employment by about 160 workers, which represents about 2.5% reduction in average retail employment. The negative employment effect is not limited to books and electronics but is widespread across products such as foods and sporting goods. Furthermore, a sizable employment spillover to other sectors (e.g., restaurants and transportation & warehousing) is not found. Our findings suggest that the diffusion of e-commerce has overall negative impacts on local labor markets.