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

Serhan Cevik

German Economic Review, 2023, vol. 24, issue 3, 305-321

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.

Keywords: pandemic; consumer spending; card transactions; Baltics; euro area (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E27 E32 I10 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ger-2023-0040 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
Working Paper: Show Me the Money: Tracking Consumer Spending with Daily Card Transaction Data During the Pandemic (2022)
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:bpj:germec:v:24:y:2023:i:3:p:305-321:n:3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ger/html

DOI: 10.1515/ger-2023-0040

Access Statistics for this article

German Economic Review is currently edited by Peter Egger, Almut Balleer, Jesus Crespo-Cuaresma, Mario Larch, Aderonke Osikominu and Georg Wamser

More articles in German Economic Review from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().