Consumer Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from Bank Account Transaction Data

Asger Lau Andersen, Emil Toft Hansen, Niels Johannesen and Adam Sheridan
Additional contact information
Asger Lau Andersen: CEBI, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen
Emil Toft Hansen: CEBI, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen
Adam Sheridan: CEBI, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

No 20-18, CEBI working paper series from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI)

Abstract: This paper uses transaction-level customer data from the largest bank in Denmark to estimate the change in consumer spending caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shutdown of the Danish economy. We find that aggregate spending was on average 27% below the counterfactual level without the pandemic in the seven weeks following the shutdown. The spending drop was mostly concentrated on goods and services whose supply was directly restricted by the shutdown, suggesting a limited role for spillovers to non-restricted sectors through demand in the short term. The spending drop was larger for individuals with more ex ante exposure to the adverse consequences of the crisis in the form of job loss, wealth destruction, severe disease and disrupted consumption patterns and, most notably, for individuals with an ex post realization of crisis-related unemployment.

Keywords: COVID-19; consumer spending; pandemic; social distancing; shutdown (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 H31 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2020-05-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (142)

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https://www.econ.ku.dk/cebi/publikationer/working-papers/CEBI_WP_18-20_rev.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Consumer responses to the COVID‐19 crisis: evidence from bank account transaction data (2022)
Working Paper: Consumer Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from Bank Account Transaction Data (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kucebi:2018

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