IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/germec/v24y2023i3p305-321n3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Show Me the Money: Tracking Consumer Spending with Daily Card Transaction Data During the Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Cevik Serhan

    (International Monetary Fund, Washington, USA)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented shock to economic activity with abrupt and unexpected changes in household consumption behavior. This paper investigates how the spread of the pandemic and government interventions have affected consumer spending using daily card transaction data in the Baltics. The analysis shows significant effects on the amount and composition of debit and credit card transactions. First, the number of new COVID-19 infections or deaths has a strongly negative effect. Second, while public health measures designed to contain the spread of the pandemic has a negative effect, economic support measures designed to assist businesses and households have a stimulative effect. Third, there is heterogeneity across spending categories, but the drop is mostly concentrated in sectors that are restricted by lockdowns and the risk of infection. Fourth, the impact of government interventions, especially in terms of stimulating consumer spending, appears to be more pronounced on goods than services.

Suggested Citation

  • Cevik Serhan, 2023. "Show Me the Money: Tracking Consumer Spending with Daily Card Transaction Data During the Pandemic," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 24(3), pages 305-321, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:germec:v:24:y:2023:i:3:p:305-321:n:3
    DOI: 10.1515/ger-2023-0040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/ger-2023-0040
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/ger-2023-0040?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Serhan Cevik, 2024. "Good Will Hunting: Do Disasters Make Us More Charitable?," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 25(1), pages 275-287, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    pandemic; consumer spending; card transactions; Baltics; euro area;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E27 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:germec:v:24:y:2023:i:3:p:305-321:n:3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.