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E-Commerce Development and Household Consumption Growth in China

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Date
2019-04
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2019-04
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China has quickly become the largest e-commerce market in the world. By matching a nationally representative China Family Panel Studies survey with county-level e-commerce information obtained from Alibaba, this paper examines how e-commerce development has shaped household consumption growth in China. The paper presents three major findings. First, e-commerce development is associated with higher consumption growth. Second, the relationship is stronger for the rural sample, inland regions, and poor households, suggesting that e-commerce development helps reduce spatial inequality in consumption. Third, the consumption of durable goods and in-style goods has grown faster than the consumption of local services.
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Luo, Xubei; Wang, Yue; Zhang, Xiaobo. 2019. E-Commerce Development and Household Consumption Growth in China. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8810. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31539 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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