CREAT: Census Research Exploration and Analysis Tool

Raising the Barcode Scanner: Technology and Productivity in the Retail Sector

May 2011

Written by: Emek Basker

Working Paper Number:

CES-11-16R

Abstract

Barcodes and barcode scanners transformed the grocery industry in the 1970s. I use store-level data from the 1972, 1977, and 1982 Census of Retail Trade, matched to data on store scanner installations, to estimate scanners' effect on labor productivity. I find that early scanners increased a store's labor productivity, on average, by approximately 4.5 percent in the first few years. The effect was larger in stores carrying more packaged products, consistent with the presence of network externalities. Short-run gains were small relative to fixed costs, suggesting that the impediment to widespread adoption of the new technology was profitability, not coordination problems.

Document Tags and Keywords

Keywords Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant keywords.

By analyzing the content of working papers, KeyBERT identifies terms and phrases that capture the essence of the text, highlighting the most significant topics and trends. This approach not only enhances searchability but provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords.
:
manufacturing, payroll, sale, innovation, inventory, retailer, wholesale, retailing, warehouse, retail, grocery, supermarket

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The model is able to label words and phrases by part-of-speech, including "organizations." By filtering for frequent words and phrases labeled as "organizations", papers are identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
:
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Center for Economic Studies, Bureau of Economic Analysis, IBM, Current Population Survey, Longitudinal Business Database, Department of Agriculture, Census of Retail Trade, Electronic Data Interchange, Economic Census, Business Register

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