Russell Hillberry, Kornel Mahlstein, Simon Schropp
{"title":"The geography of payment activity on PayPal","authors":"Russell Hillberry, Kornel Mahlstein, Simon Schropp","doi":"10.1111/roie.12683","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":": We use data from PayPal to study the geography of online payment activity. An empirical gravity model finds a distance elasticity of -0.58 for payment values, a result that is 40% lower than typically observed in conventional trade data. The firm-extensive margin is approximately half as sensitive to distance. The link between the scale of merchants’ exports and transaction distance is considerably weaker than observed in conventional international trade data. Zipf’s Law holds for PayPal merchants in some countries, but fails in smaller PayPal markets. Merchant age accounts only marginally affects the scale and average distance of export sales.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of International Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12683","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
: We use data from PayPal to study the geography of online payment activity. An empirical gravity model finds a distance elasticity of -0.58 for payment values, a result that is 40% lower than typically observed in conventional trade data. The firm-extensive margin is approximately half as sensitive to distance. The link between the scale of merchants’ exports and transaction distance is considerably weaker than observed in conventional international trade data. Zipf’s Law holds for PayPal merchants in some countries, but fails in smaller PayPal markets. Merchant age accounts only marginally affects the scale and average distance of export sales.
期刊介绍:
The Review of International Economics is devoted to the publication of high-quality articles on a full range of topics in international economics. The Review comprises controversial and innovative thought and detailed contributions from other directly related fields such as economic development; trade and the environment; and political economy. Whether theoretical, empirical or policy-oriented, its relevance to real world problems is of paramount concern.