Restrictions on shop opening hours have deep historical roots. In 321 CE, Roman Emperor Constantine issued the first known prohibition on Sunday labour, declaring: “On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed” (Wikipedia 2025). So-called blue laws or Sunday closing laws used to be measures to encourage religious observance, but today are usually justified as ways to strengthen family and community life or to shield workers from non-standard hours. The debate over their costs and benefits continues.
An ongoing policy debate
Sunday closing laws remain widespread across European countries, including Austria, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK, though recent decades have seen substantial reforms. In England, the Sunday closing laws were relaxed in 1994. Until then, on Sundays, large shops had to be closed, and since then, large shops are permitted to open up to six hours. A 2015–16 proposal to let local authorities set their own rules for Sunday store opening hours was rejected in parliament. Germany deregulated weekday store opening hours in 2006, but on Sundays still requires most stores to be closed. Several countries lifted the Sunday restrictions in recent years, including Denmark in 2012, Finland and Hungary in 2016. On the other hand, Poland introduced one of Europe’s strictest bans in 2018, closing almost all stores on Sundays.
In the US, most of the laws that place a wide ban on commerce on certain days have been repealed. However, many states still restrict the hours during which alcohol can be sold and ban the sale of cars on Sundays.
North Dakota long maintained one of the strictest blue laws, banning almost all Sunday morning retail from midnight to noon. The ban was repealed in 2019, taking effect on 1 August 2019. In early 2025, lawmakers considered reinstating similar restrictions, but the proposal was defeated.
Previous studies
Opening hours restrictions can have both social benefits and costs. Earlier empirical work has focused mainly on potential benefits, examining effects on employment (Skuterud 2005, Paul 2015, Bensnes and Strom 2019, Rizzica et al. 2023), church attendance (Gruber and Hungerman 2008, Cohen-Zada and Sander 2011), and alcohol consumption (Bernheim et al. 2016, Hinnosaar 2016). These studies show that opening hours restrictions can protect workers and even strengthen community and religious practices.
Less is known about the costs to consumers, such as the inconvenience from restricted store access. Measuring these costs is difficult because it requires data on shopping time and location at an hourly level. Jacobsen and Kooreman (2005) use time diary data in the Netherlands to document that shopping activities shifted toward workday evenings after deregulation. Consumers are known to travel large distances to shop at lower prices (Friberg et al. 2019, 2022). Store closures could also incentivise more travelling in cross-border regions.
To the best of our knowledge, our paper (Donna et al. 2025) is the first to use GPS data to study the impact of store-hour deregulation. Our GPS dataset allows us to study both shopping time and location choices. Moreover, as the policy change affected only certain types of stores in one state, we have natural control groups (neighbouring states and other types of stores) that allow us to study the causal impact of the deregulation.
New evidence from North Dakota
Taking advantage of hourly store-level GPS tracking data, we study consumer behaviour and provide comprehensive evidence on the costs to consumers from store-hour restrictions. To isolate the causal impact of lifting Sunday morning restrictions, we analyse shopping patterns before and after deregulation in North Dakota. Using a difference-in-differences design, we compare North Dakota with its neighbouring states: Minnesota, Montana, and South Dakota. Figure 1 maps Walmart locations in North Dakota and neighbouring states.
Figure 1 Walmart locations in North Dakota and neighbouring states
Consumers want to shop on Sunday mornings
Figure 2 shows that before August 2019, Sunday morning visits to Walmart stores in North Dakota were minimal, while neighbouring states saw substantial traffic. After the repeal, North Dakota visits rose sharply, becoming more similar to across-border levels, while neighbouring states’ patterns remained stable. In contrast, Sunday morning visits to grocery stores in North Dakota – unaffected by the policy – showed no change. Event-study estimates (Figure 3a) confirm the pattern: Sunday morning visits to Walmart stores in North Dakota increased immediately after the repeal, with no similar change in neighbouring states.
Figure 2 Sunday morning visits to Walmart and grocery stores, before vs after the policy change
Substitution across time, store type, and state
The flexibility to shop on Sunday mornings reshaped behaviour in three ways:
- Across time: Some new Sunday morning visits replaced Sunday-afternoon trips (Figure 3b).
- Across store types: Grocery stores in North Dakota saw fewer Sunday morning visits, suggesting they had served as a second-best option when Walmart stores were closed (Figure 3c).
- Across state lines: Border Walmart stores in Minnesota saw fewer Sunday morning visits, as North Dakota residents no longer crossed state lines (Figure 3d).
Figure 3 Event-study estimates of Sunday morning visits to Walmart and grocery stores, North Dakota vs neighbouring states
Welfare analysis
To combine these behavioural shifts into a single welfare metric, we use travel distance. Restrictions can harm consumers if they must travel farther to shop or switch to a less-preferred option, such as forgoing some of the shopping trips. We estimate a simple discrete-choice model of store type and time and find that North Dakota’s pre-2019 Sunday morning ban was welfare-equivalent to moving the nearest Walmart about 1.4 miles (2.25 kilometres) farther away for every consumer.
It is worth emphasising that this welfare analysis captures only the consumer side of the policy’s effects. We do not analyse potential changes in firm behaviour, such as pricing, product variety, or investment, or labour-market outcomes. Our findings measure only one side of the policy’s impact, while all the above factors are important for overall welfare.
Policy implications
Our evidence shows that Sunday morning trading restrictions impose real costs on consumers, even where alternative shopping options exist. In North Dakota, deregulation increased overall shopping, reduced cross-border travel, and shifted activity toward preferred times and stores. The estimated welfare loss is equivalent to 1.4 extra miles (2.25 kilometres) per trip. Policymakers face a trade-off: restrictions may help maintain a shared day of rest and can benefit small retailers or workers seeking more convenient schedules, but they also reduce flexibility for time-constrained households and may shift spending to other jurisdictions.
References
Bensnes, S S, and B Strom (2019), “Earning or learning? How extending closing time in the retail sector affects youth employment and education”, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 81(2): 299–327.
Bernheim, B D, J Meer, and N K Novarro (2016), “Do consumers exploit commitment opportunities? Evidence from natural experiments involving liquor consumption”, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 8(4): 41–69.
Cohen-Zada, D, and W Sander (2011), “Religious participation versus shopping: What makes people happier?”, The Journal of Law and Economics 54(4): 889–906.
Friberg, R, F Steen, and S A Ulsaker (2022), “Hump-shaped cross-price effects and the extensive margin in cross-border shopping”, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 14(2): 408–38.
Friberg, R, F Steen, and S A Ulsaker (2019), “Hump-shaped cross-price effects and the extensive margin of cross-border shopping”, VoxEU.org, 9 May.
Gruber, J, and D M Hungerman (2008), “The church versus the mall: What happens when religion faces increased secular competition?”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(2): 831–62.
Hinnosaar, M (2016), “Time inconsistency and alcohol sales restrictions”, European Economic Review 87: 108–31.
Donna, J D, M Hinnosaar, T Hinnosaar, and A Trindade (2025), “Opening hours and consumer behavior: Evidence from GPS data and deregulation”, CEPR Discussion Paper 20409.
Jacobsen, J P, and P Kooreman (2005), “Timing constraints and the allocation of time: The effects of changing shopping hours regulations in the Netherlands”, European Economic Review 49(1): 9–27.
Paul, A (2015), “After work shopping? Employment effects of a deregulation of shop opening hours in the German retail sector”, European Economic Review 80: 329–53.
Rizzica, L, G Roma, and G Rovigatti (2023), “The effects of deregulating retail operating hours: Empirical evidence from Italy”, The Journal of Law and Economics 66(1): 21–52.
Skuterud, M (2005), “The impact of Sunday shopping on employment and hours of work in the retail industry: Evidence from Canada”, European Economic Review 49(8): 1953–78.
Wikipedia (2025), “Blue Law”.
