Camila Steffens, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M)

"Effects of e-commerce on local employment and firms’ dynamics".

Abstract:
E-commerce has been growing in the last decades, but little is known about its effects on labor markets. In this paper, I provide the first evidence for the effects of e-commerce on local employment and firms in a developing country. I employ a Difference-in-Differences design, exploiting state-border discontinuities of shipping costs and the expansion of a major e-commerce player to the Northeast region of Brazil. I show that each percentage point increase in e-commerce exposure decreases local employment by 6%. These findings highlight the importance of studying the effects of e-commerce on workers’ mobility and wages.