Income inequality and product variety: Empirical evidence

Arbeitspapier

This article investigates the relationship between income inequality and firms' locations and product choices. Using detailed information on income at a regionally disaggregated level and individual data on Austrian restaurants, we demonstrate that firm conduct crucially depends on the distribution (in addition to the level) of income. Local markets with higher income inequality are characterized by a larger number of firms, offering a broader range of products and product variants that are on average less common. These findings indicate that local demand is substantially in uenced by the heterogeneity in consumers' income endowments, resulting in large differences in product variety.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Working Paper ; No. 2017

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Firm Organization and Market Structure ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity ; Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
• Thema: income inequality ; product variety ; product differentiation ; firm conduct ; restaurants

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Pennerstorfer, Dieter ; Schindler, Nora ; Weiss, Christoph R. ; Yontcheva, Biliana
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Department of Economics
• (wo): Linz
• (wann): 2020

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/246307
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:45 MEZ