COVID-19 and regional shifts in Swiss retail payments

Sébastien Kraenzlin, Christoph Meyer and Thomas Nellen

No 2020-15, Working Papers from Swiss National Bank

Abstract: This paper analyzes card payments to the retail sector in Switzerland during the COVID-19 crisis. We provide evidence on aggregate effects and regional shifts. Pronounced shifts - which persisted post-lockdown - can be observed from urban to suburban and rural areas and among cantons. Data allow us to identify directly two sources of shifts: "tourists and business travelers," and "e-commerce." We indirectly identify additional sources: infection risk, lockdown measures, working from home, shopping tourism, and cash substitution. The COVID-19 crisis seems to have reinforced pre-existing trends that may have faster than anticipated effects on the economy. Our analysis underscores the usefulness of real-time card payment data to inform policy makers.

Keywords: COVID-19; lockdown; card payment data; regional sale shifts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E42 E65 E71 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-mac, nep-pay and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.snb.ch/en/publications/research/workin ... orking_paper_2020_15 (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: COVID-19 and regional shifts in Swiss retail payments (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:snb:snbwpa:2020-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Swiss National Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Enzo Rossi ().