Consumption during the Covid-19 pandemic: evidence from Italian credit cards

Simone Emiliozzi, Concetta Rondinelli and Stefania Villa

No 769, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: This study analyzes high-frequency data on credit cards to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Italian consumer transactions. Using an event study approach, it finds that during the national lockdown total transactions fell by over 50%. The decline was particularly severe in high-contact sectors such as restaurants and travel, reflecting the impact of containment measures. The analysis uncovers a strong heterogeneity also in the responses of different regions, with larger contractions recorded in the Northern regions due to early government restrictions. Overall, this dataset can be particularly useful given the publication lag of official data on household consumption both at the national and regional level.

Keywords: consumption; transaction data; Covid-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 E21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-mfd and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2023-0769/QEF_769_23.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_769_23

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().