Map of Walmart Supercenter locations in North Dakota and neighbouring states. Sunday morning store closures impose significant costs on consumers, but supporters of such ‘blue laws’ argue these rules protect workers, family life, and small retailers. This column uses GPS data to study the effects of lifting North Dakota’s strict Sunday morning retail ban in 2019. After the repeal, Sunday morning visits to Walmart stores rose sharply, reducing cross-border travel and shifting shopping to preferred times and stores. The consumer welfare loss from the ban was equivalent to an extra 1.4 miles (2.25 km) per shopping trip, highlighting a trade-off between a day of shared rest and consumer flexibility.

After a repeal of North Dakota's Sunday morning retail ban, morning visits to Walmart stores rose sharply, reducing cross-border travel & shifting shopping to preferred times and stores.
J Donna, @marit.hinnosaar.net @toomas.hinnosaar.net @andre-trindade.bsky.social
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
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We find that:
1) Elasticity of demand faced by our firm is 1.63x larger due to informality
2) Eliminating energy theft would allow the firm to reduce prices by 17.7%, while keeping profits constant;
3) Price discrimination strategies are effective tools to curb informality.

Using detailed micro data, we estimate a structural model of consumer choices under informality. We leverage the model to understand outcomes under different scenarios.

Energy theft has huge efficient and environmental consequences in itself.

We study this question in the context of electricity theft in Brazil, where stolen energy can represent more than 50% of the total formal market.

Consumers respond to a price changes in two ways: 1) along the formal demand curve; 2) by switching to/from informality. The latter makes demand curves substantially more elastic, and significantly affects firms optimal pricing.

In this paper we study firms' pricing decisions in settings with large informality, i.e., when goods can be consumed outside of formal markets (e.g.: theft, counterfeit, or illegal sharing of subscriptions).

**New Working Paper Alert**-> "Pricing and Informality: Evidence from Energy Theft in Brazil", joint with Davi Resende, Gabriel Richter, and Marcelo Sant'Anna -> Link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....