The Real Economic Effects of Electronic Consumption Vouchers:Evidence from Unionpay Platform
Government consumption vouchers serve as an important economic stimulus tool de-signed to invigorate the market and provide necessary support to businesses that are affected by eco-nomic pressures.In order to thoroughly investigate the actual effects of this policy tool,this paper conducts a quasi-natural experiment with the distribution of electronic consumption vouchers by vari-ous levels of governments in Jiangxi Province.Taking the data from 264,000 active merchants con-tracted with Jiangxi Unionpay platform from 2019 to 2022 of totaling 968,000 observation values as the samples,this study constructs multi-period difference-in-differences models and triple difference models to examine the impact of government-issued electronic consumption vouchers on the operations of physical merchants and their mechanisms of action,as well as to discuss the social welfare effects of government electronic consumption vouchers.The results show that:firstly,the leverage effect of government e-coupon on the real economy is between 1.308～3.250 times,and the elasticity coefficient of the coupon is between 0.152～0.395.Secondly,e-coupon mainly have a positive impact on the op-eration of physical merchants through the three mechanisms:price discrimination,small profits and good sales,and brand effects.Thirdly,the unique way of issuing and canceling government e-vouchers will neither cause the crowding out of consumer welfare nor increase the financial burden.Therefore,to further stimulate domestic market demand in the future,it is recommended to refine the distribu-tion channels and mechanisms of government electronic consumption vouchers,ensure the accurate al-location of consumer vouchers to the target groups and efficient conversion,thereby maximizing their economic and social benefits.
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