TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ellison,Glenn
AU  - Ellison,Sara Fisher
TI  - Internet Retail Demand: Taxes, Geography, and Online-Offline Competition
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12242
PY  - 2006
Y2  - May 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12242
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12242.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Glenn Ellison
Department of Economics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
50 Memorial Drive, E52-380A
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8702
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gellison@mit.edu

Sara Fisher Ellison
MIT, E52-274A
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142
Tel: 617-253-3821
Fax: 617-253-1330
E-Mail: sellison@mit.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-05-15
AB  - Data on sales of memory modules are used to explore several aspects of e-retail demand. There is a strong relationship between e-retail sales to a given state and sales tax rates that apply to purchases from online retailers. This suggests that there is substantial substitution between online and online retail, and tax avoidance may be an important contributor to e-retail activity. Geography matters in two ways: we find some evidence that consumers prefer purchasing from firms in nearby states to benefit from faster shipping times as well as evidence of a separate preference for buying from in-state firms. Consumers appear fairly rational in some ways, but boundedly rational in others.
ER  -