Layout of store_openings.cvs file
March 3, 2010
File used in paper The Diffusion of Wal-Mart and Economies of Density,” Econometrica, Vol. 79, No. 1 (January, 2011), 253-302
by
University of Minnesota, Federal Reserve Bank of
Description of File:
Opening dates of Wal-Mart stores and Supercenters, 1962-Jan 31, 2006 (Alaska and Hawaii excluded)
As discussed in the appendix of the paper, this file was constructed as follows: In November 2005, Wal-Mart made public a file which listed for each Wal-Mart store the address, store number, store type (supercenter or regular store) and opening date. This data was combined with additional information posted at Wal-Mart's web site about openings through January 31, 2006 (the end of fiscal year 2006). The opening date mentioned above is the date of the original store opening, not the date of any later conversion to a supercenter. To get the date of supercenter conversions, I used two pieces of information. From annoucements at Wal-Mart's website, I determined the dates of conversions taking place in 2001 and after. To get the dates of conversions taking place before 2001, I used data collected by Emek Basker (see Basker (2005)) based on published directories.
Store Count: There are 3176 Wal-Mart stores in the data file. Of these, 1980 are supercenters and 1196 are regular Wal-Mart stores.
|
Variable Name |
Description |
|
OPENDATE |
Opening date of original store |
|
STRCITY |
City of store (source Wal-Mart store alignment file and posted openings) |
|
STREETADDR |
Address of store (source Wal-Mart store alignment file and posted openings) |
|
STRSTATE |
State of store (source Wal-Mart store alignment file and posted openings) |
|
ZIPCODE |
Zip of store (source Wal-Mart store alignment file and posted openings) |
|
conversion |
=1 if supercenter through conversion of existing store, =0 if supercenter originally |
|
county |
FIPS code of county |
|
date_super |
Opening date of food business |
|
st |
FIPS code of state |
|
storenum |
Permanant store number assigned by Wal-Mart |
|
type_store |
Store type as of Jan 31, 2006 |