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JUE Insight: Measuring local consumption with payment cards and cell phone pings

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  • Klopack, Ben
  • Luco, Fernando

Abstract

We compare two widely used sources of consumption data: payment card transactions (from credit and debit cards) and cell phone location pings. We find they are positively but imperfectly correlated; payment card usage is higher among higher-income consumers, while cell phone pings only loosely track consumer spending. We develop a methodology that combines both sources to measure local retail spending and show that it closely tracks more aggregated government data. We illustrate its use by quantifying local fiscal multipliers. We show that the impacts of government spending shocks are highly localized, decay spatially, and are heterogeneous across store categories.

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  • Klopack, Ben & Luco, Fernando, 2025. "JUE Insight: Measuring local consumption with payment cards and cell phone pings," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:149:y:2025:i:c:s0094119025000634
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2025.103798
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