Theme: Irrational Rationality: Irrational Rationality: Evidence from E-Commerce in China

Guest Speaker: Yu Zhou (New York University Shanghai)

Time:  April 10, 2024 (Wednesday) 10:30-11:45am

Venue: 210, Business School Building

Organizer: Department of Economics

Guest Bio:

  Yu (Amanda) Zhou is an Associate Professor of Economics at New York University Shanghai. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and B.A. and M.A. degrees from Peking University.

Synopsis：

  The global deterioration of COVID-19 on the traditional commercial has been immense. But little is known about its effects on e-commerce. We quantify the causal effect of the lockdown for COVID-19 and the fear of information across continents on the online economy. Using the daily online data on imported baby formula across 16 brands from 14 countries, we exploit difference in difference method to separate the effects of the domestic lockdown and the international lockdown on the online e-commerce. We find that the international lockdown is as equally important as domestic lockdown to affect the online purchases. Most interestingly, we find that though the baby formula when they purchased has been stored at the Bonded Warehouse in China, the fear from the belief causes customers to switch their purchase from lockdown continents to the non-lockdown continents. The results are robust in the consumer level and product level. Our estimates provide important empirical evidence to understand the effects the lockdown.