Luxury resale volume and composition shifted during the COVID-19 tourism shock, but co-purchase network tests were inconclusive and construction-sensitive

Tengfei Shao

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arXiv · 2609.36825

Luxury resale volume and composition shifted during the COVID-19 tourism shock, but co-purchase network tests were inconclusive and construction-sensitive

Tengfei Shao

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Abstract

Japan's 2020 tourism shock coincided with 27% fewer buyers and 35% lower gross merchandise value at one second-hand luxury resale intermediary. We compared 2019 and 2020 co-purchase projections of recorded brand labels with a Holm-corrected battery of five label-invariant metrics and Portrait Divergence against two permutation nulls rebuilding both graphs. Neither test separated the full years (smallest Holm p 0.407; 0.097 under the design-matched paired-swap null). For one random two-block split of brands, the battery detected a planted redirection of 30% of multi-brand baskets (178 of 10,399 second-group baskets, 1.7%) in 83 of 100 simulations (83-92 of 100 across 11 splits, all at least 80); Portrait Divergence reached 80% power only at full redirection. Observed falls in mean degree and clustering resembled those of 20-30% redirection, but the planted rise in degree assortativity was absent. A composition-only model of the observed attrition would be detected in only 15 of 100 simulations. Results moved with construction: without residual and material labels (post hoc), mean degree separated the years under the paired-swap null (Holm p = 0.030), and Portrait Divergence fell below 0.05, unadjusted, at the widest construction and within April-December. Shock-period network comparisons need rebuilt-graph nulls and a per-metric detection floor.

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Tengfei Shao. 2026-09-29. Luxury resale volume and composition shifted during the COVID-19 tourism shock, but co-purchase network tests were inconclusive and construction-sensitive. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36825

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