Going Cashless: Government’s Point Reward Program vs. COVID-19

Toshitaka Sekine, Toshiaki Shoji and Tsutomu Watanabe
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Toshiaki Shoji: Seikei University
Tsutomu Watanabe: University of Tokyo

No 40, Working Papers on Central Bank Communication from University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics

Abstract: Using credit card transaction data, we examine the impacts of two successive events that promoted cashless payments in Japan: the government’s program and the COVID19 pandemic. We find that the number of card users was 9-12 percent higher in restaurants that participated in the program than those that did not. We present a simple framework accounting for the spread of cashless payments. Our model predicts that the impact of the policy intervention diminished as the use of cashless payments increased, which accords well with Japan’s COVID-19 experience. The estimated impact of COVID-19 was around two-thirds of that of the program.

Keywords: Cash and cashless payments; technology adoption; promotion program; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 O33 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2022-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pay
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