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Who Benefits Whom in the Neighborhood? Demographics and Retail Product Geography
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Waldfogel, Joel |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | May 31, 2006 Because of fixed costs, additional people nearby confer a benefit on each other by helping to make more retail products available. Yet, because product preferences differ across groups of consumers, the appeal of what’s available depends on the mix of consumers. If product preferences relate to consumer characteristics such as race, income, age, and ethnicity, then product availability will be stimulated by concentration of like individuals. The sensitivity of product availability to demographic mix of consumers has been documented for metropolitan-area products, such as newspapers, radio, and television, as well as one neighborhood-level product, restaurants. Here I revisit the question for a broader group of local retail establishments. Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey, I document that preferences differ across groups. Then, using the 2000 Census and the 2000 Zipcode Business Patterns, I show that the mix of products available is sensitive to the mix of local preferences. People therefore derive benefit through the product market from agglomerating with persons with similar product preferences, and this may help to explain patterns of residential segregation. |
| Starting Page | 181 |
| Ending Page | 209 |
| Page Count | 29 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.nber.org/chapters/c7982.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
