L8 - Industry Studies: Services

• Measuring the Effectiveness of Salespeople: Evidence from a Cold-Drink Market

  Staff Working Paper 2021-40 Haofeng Jin, Zhentong Lu

  Salespeople are widely employed in many industries. We leverage a unique data set on retail sales from a leading Chinese cold-drink manufacturer and information on the firm’s salespeople assignment rule to measure the causal effect of salespeople on product revenue.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Service sector JEL Code(s): L, L8, L81, M, M3, M5

• The Effects of Government Licensing on E-commerce: Evidence from Alibaba

  Staff Working Paper 2021-32 Ginger Zhe Jin, Zhentong Lu, Xiaolu Zhou, Chunxiao Li

  How does government licensing affect selling on online platforms? We examine the impact of China’s 2015 Food Safety Law on sellers and buyers on Alibaba, the largest e-commerce platform in that country.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Market structure and pricing, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, K, K2, K23, L, L5, L8, L81

• Overlooking the online world: Does mismeasurement of the digital economy explain the productivity slowdown?

  Staff Analytical Note 2021-10 Alejandra Bellatin, Stephanie Houle

  Since the mid-2000s, labour productivity has slowed down in Canada despite enormous technological advances that were expected to improve it. This note investigates whether mismeasurement of the digital economy can explain this paradox.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E0, E01, L, L8, L86, O, O3, O33, O4, O5, O51

• Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in Canada and the United States

  Staff Working Paper 2021-8 Marie-Hélène Felt, Fumiko Hayashi, Joanna Stavins, Angelika Welte

  Although credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept than cash or debit cards, merchants typically pass through their costs evenly to all customers. Along with consumer card rewards and banking fees, this creates cross-subsidies between payment methods. Because higher-income individuals tend to use credit cards more than those with lower incomes, our results indicate that these cross-subsidies might lead to regressive distributional effects.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Financial institutions, Financial services, Market structure and pricing, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, D2, D23, D3, D31, E, E4, E42, G, G2, G21, L, L8, L81