Work

Cross-Border Shopping: Evidence from Household Transaction Records

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Cross-border shopping allows purchasing comparable goods at lower prices abroad. At the same time, it can reduce domestic consumption, sales, or tax collection. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries restricted cross-border movements to mitigate the virus’s spread, thereby also prohibiting cross-border shopping. I exploit the random timing of the Swiss border closure using data on 600 million customer-linked transactions from the largest Swiss retailer to identify patterns in cross-border shopping. I find that grocery expenditures temporarily increased by 10-15% in border regions. Households drive up to 70 minutes to a location across the border, but the distance decay function is non-linear and marginal costs of traveling become negligible after 40 minutes.

Source: Open Access CRIS of the University of Bern

DOI: 10.48350/181791

Author: Kluser, Frédéric

Language: English

Topic: Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing

Subfield: Marketing

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W6947919666

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