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Customer‐employee substitution: Evidence from gasoline stations
Author(s) -
Basker Emek,
Foster Lucia,
Klimek Shawn
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of economics and management strategy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.672
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1530-9134
pISSN - 1058-6407
DOI - 10.1111/jems.12215
Subject(s) - quarter (canadian coin) , productivity , census , service (business) , business , full service , work (physics) , customer service , demographic economics , operations management , marketing , agricultural economics , economics , engineering , geography , economic growth , commerce , population , environmental health , medicine , mechanical engineering , archaeology
We document the adoption of self‐service pumps in U.S. gasoline stations from 1977 to 1992. Using establishment‐level data from the Census of Retail Trade over this period, we show that self‐service stations employ approximately one quarter fewer attendants per pump, all else equal. The work done by these attendants has shifted to customers, biasing upward conventional measures of productivity growth.