Consumers’ Mobility, Expenditure and Online-Offline Substitution Response to COVID-19: Evidence from French Transaction Data

David Bounie, Youssouf Camara and John Galbraith
Additional contact information
David Bounie: CNRS, Telecom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Youssouf Camara: CNRS, Telecom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris

No 14-2020, Cahiers de recherche from Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ

Abstract: This paper investigates a number of general phenomena connected with consumer behaviour in response to a severe economic shock, using billions of French card transactions measured before and during the COVID-19 epidemic. We examine changes in consumer mobility, anticipatory behaviour in response to announced restrictions, and the contrasts between the responses of online and traditional point-of-sale (offline) consumption expenditures to the shock. We track hourly, daily and weekly responses as well as estimating an aggregate fixed-period impact effect via a differencein-difference estimator. The results, particularly at the sectoral level, suggest that recourse to the online shopping option diminished somewhat the overall impact of the shock on consumption expenditure, thereby increasing resiliency of the economy.

Keywords: COVID-19; consumption expenditure; consumer mobility; online commerce; resiliency; transaction data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E61 E62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (58)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cireqmontreal.com/wp-content/uploads/cahiers/14-2020-cah.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Consumers’ Mobility, Expenditure and Online-Offline Substitution Response to COVID-19: Evidence from French Transaction Data (2020)
Working Paper: Consumers' Mobility, Expenditure and Online- Offline Substitution Response to COVID-19: Evidence from French Transaction Data (2020)
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:mtl:montec:14-2020

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cahiers de recherche from Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sharon BREWER ().