Finance Webinar（2020-22)

Topic: Customers and Retail Growth

Speaker: Peter J. Klenow, Stanford University and NBER

Time: Wednesday, 2 December,10:00-11:30 AM Beijing Time

Location: Microsoft Teams Online Conference Room

Abstract:

Using Visa debit and credit card transactions in the U.S. from 2016 to 2019, we document the importance of customers in accounting for sales variation across merchants, across stores within retail chains, and over time for individual merchants and stores. Customers, as opposed to transactions per customer or dollar sales per transaction, consistently account for about 80% of sales variation. The top 5% of growing and shrinking merchants account for the bulk of customer reallocation in a given year. We then write down a simple growth model that incorporates both the extensive and intensive margins by which firms can increase sales, and illustrates why the distinction could matter. In this context, we show that the extensive customer margin amplifies the role of large firms in sales and sales growth, but does not stimulate aggregate growth.

Introduction:

Pete Klenow is Ralph Landau Professor of Economics at Stanford University, the Gordon and Betty Moore Senior Fellow at SIEPR, and the Dong Wei Fellow at the King Center for Economic Development.He is Co-Director of the Economic Fluctuations and Growth group at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and is a co-editor of the American Economic Review: Insights. His research focuses on productivity, prices and economic growth, using micro data to shed light on macro questions. Pete received his bachelor's degree in business from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986, and his PhD in economics from Stanford in 1991. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He has received multiple awards for his MBA and undergraduate teaching.

Your participation is warmly welcomed!