Means-tested COVID-19 stimulus payment and consumer spending: Evidence from card transaction data in South Korea.

This study examines the effect of a means-tested COVID-19 stimulus payment, which was provided by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in South Korea, on consumer spending. The Seoul government issued a one-off payment in the spring of 2020 for residents in the city living below the national median income. We use daily card transaction data aggregated by users' age, income and location of residence, and apply a difference-in-differences approach to assess the effect of the stimulus payment. We compare consumption for the treatment (eligible for the payment) and control (ineligible but with a similar level of income) groups before and after the implementation of the payment. The results show that the payment increased consumer spending for the treatment group by about 12%. Recipients of the means-tested payment have a marginal propensity of consumption at no less than 59%, larger than that found for a universal emergency payment made by the Korean government and similar stimulus checks in other countries.

Tracking the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic with the Use of High-Frequency Geo-Located Bank Transaction Data

Using geo-located transaction data from 2 million customers of ABN AMRO bank in the Netherlands, this paper distinguishes the economic effects of consumers responses to the Covid-19 pandemic from those attributable to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). We compare municipalities that experienced large Covid-19 outbreaks with municipalities that had few or no cases and find that during the first Covid-19 wave the scale of the outbreak in a municipality has a strong negative effect on physical transactions by consumers in that municipality. This behavioral response function of consumers towards the virus is however not constant over time. During the second Covid-19 wave, the behavioural effect of consumers towards the virus has no real impact on consumption. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

Spend as you were told: Evidence from labeled COVID-19 stimulus payments in South Korea.

We test the income fungibility assumption from standard economic theory by analyzing spending responses to South Korea's labeled COVID-19 stimulus payments. We exploit unique policy rules for identification: (1) recipients cannot use payments outside their province of residence, and (2) they can only use payments at establishments in pre-specified sectors. Using data on card transactions in Seoul, we find that households do not consider stimulus payments fungible. Compared to Seoul residents' benchmark spending responses to cash income gains by sector, the stimulus payments disproportionately increased Seoul residents' spending in the allowed sector compared to the non-allowed sector. The payments did not increase non-Seoul residents' card spending. Our results imply that labeled stimulus payments with usage restrictions can boost household consumption spending in targeted sectors or locations during economic recessions.

Assessing the informational content of card transactions for nowcasting retail trade: Evidence for Latvia

We use a novel card transaction data maintained at the Central Bank of Latvia to assess their informational content for nowcasting retail trade in Latvia. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Latvia, the retail trade turnover dynamics underwent drastic changes reflecting the various virus containment measures introduced during three separate waves of the pandemic. We show that the nowcasting model augmented with card transaction data successfully captures the turbulence in retail trade turnover induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The model with card transaction data outperforms all benchmark models in the out-of-sample nowcasting exercise and yields a notable improvement in forecasting metrics. We conduct our nowcasting exercise in forecast-as-you-go manner or in real-time squared;that is, we use real-time data vintages, and we make our nowcasts in real time as soon as card transaction data become available for the target month. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Forecasting published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Consumer mobility and expenditure during the COVID-19 containments: Evidence from French transaction data.

This paper investigates the effects of the pandemic containment periods in France on individuals' movements, expenditure and adaptation to the shock, using billions of French bank card transactions measured before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We measure not only the effect on consumer expenditure, but also on quantities directly related to the containment restrictions, such as consumer mobility, number of retailers visited, and inter-regional purchases. The results show large effects on these measures of consumers' movements, as well as on both online and offline measures of expenditure, particularly in the first containment period. We also find evidence that consumers adjusted rapidly during the first containment period, mitigating the effects of mobility restrictions via an increasing shift toward online purchasing, and that the nature of the adaptation differed for different types of purchase.

Consumer responses to the Covid-19 crisis: evidence from bank account transaction data.

This paper uses transaction-level bank account data from Denmark to study the dynamics of consumer spending during the Covid-19 pandemic. We document that aggregate spending initially dropped by almost 30% but recovered almost fully after the first wave. While spending plummeted in categories severely affected by supply restrictions, it increased in unaffected categories. Individual exposure to health risks and supply restrictions was associated with much larger spending cuts than exposure to income risk and unemployment. The findings suggest that the contraction was mainly caused by temporary health risks and supply restrictions, with a limited role for persistent negative spill-overs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Impact of Epidemic on Consumer Economy via Transaction Data

The sudden COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented impact on China's economic and social development, especially on consumer economy. Payment is the most closely related economic activity regarding consumers, the data of which can accurately capture the characteristic of the consumer economy. Given the point of view, this paper makes an in-depth exploration in the research direction of payment data. Based on the transaction data from China UnionPay, this paper quantifies the impact of the epidemic on consumer economy and makes a comparative analysis of different provinces and industries. The paper quantitatively reveals that the epidemic progress significantly affects the consumer confidence and the development of consumer economy. According to our analysis, it is unwise to restart work resumption when the epidemic is still not under effective control. From the perspective of payment, this paper profoundly tells about the story of how China fights against the epidemic and puts forward relevant suggestions for the follow-up epidemic prevention and control as well as the comprehensive economic recovery policies. © 2022, Editorial Office of Journal of Applied Sciences. All right reserved.

Analysis of User Behavior in a C2C Platform during COVID-19 Pandemic

The e-commerce market, which has attracted much attention in recent years, has been growing rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Among these, the growth of the market for consumer-to-consumer(C2C) transactions has been remarkable. However, few studies have analyzed the C2C market during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular, the behavioral tendencies of the sellers are not well understood. In this study, we used C2C market transaction data to analyze the behavior of users who joined the C2C platform during the COVID-19 pandemic and identified the users who continued to use it. We found that a large number of users registered for the service to trade face masks that were in short supply in the market due to heavy demand. In addition, among the users who traded masks, only the sellers continued to use the service at a high rate, suggesting that the successful experience of selling masks is important for seller retention. These results will provide useful insights to design and implement concrete strategies for seller retention. © 2021 IEEE.

Effects of stimulus checks on spending patterns of different economic groups

This paper uses daily anonymous aggregated trans-action data to analyze the changes in consumer spending caused by receipt of the stimulus payments in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. The stimulus checks were provided as part of the CARES Act aiming to provide emergency assistance for individuals and businesses affected by the pandemic. We analyze the impact of the receipt of those payments on the aggregated daily spending of different socio-economic groups and industries. We show that the transaction patterns of low spending consumers were most impacted by the stimulus payments among different spending groups. Our study results also indicate that the consumer responses after the first stimulus check (April 2020) were substantial and significant on industries that sell daily essential items, whereas consumer responses after the third stimulus check (March 2021) were significant in non-essential goods (e.g. luxury and entertainment sector). The results of this study are of crucial importance because they could help policy makers better shape stimulus payments that may be needed in future emergencies. © 2021 IEEE.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on grocery shopper behaviour: Analysis of shopper behaviour change using store transaction data

The systemic shock of coronavirus (COVID-19) and its impact on the global economy has been unprecedented with grocery shopper behaviour changing dramatically through various stages of the pandemic. COVID-19 has caused unusual market conditions, with significant changes to grocery shopper behaviour that need to be understood to allow for appreciation of shopper behaviour change and retail planning implications during future systemic shocks. The aim of this study was therefore to understand grocery-shopping behaviour during COVID-19. Specific objectives were to investigate changes to grocery sale patterns by basket size, composition and category, as well as during specific time periods of the pandemic. The use of transaction data using a range of market basket indicators (e.g., value, size, product mix), revealed profound changes that indicate the challenge shoppers faced navigating a new ?normal grocery shop? and the pressure on retailers to analyse consumption changes in order to prioritise demand planning. While the use of this data and analysis approach is an important contribution to consumer behaviour research, our focus was on the bigger patterns observed through the data pertaining to changes in shopper behaviour during systemic shocks. A key contribution of this paper is how the use of transaction data from grocery retail provides a nuanced understanding of how grocery shoppers responded leading up to and during the pandemic. For example, we found that grocery shoppers purchased more than just ?daily staples? to stock-up during the pandemic, with increased awareness of health and wellbeing an important aspect.

Regional and sectorial impacts of the Covid-19 crisis: Evidence from electronic payments.

We use novel and comprehensive monthly data on electronic payments, by municipality and sector, together with cash withdrawals, to study the impact of Covid-19 in Portugal. Our difference-in-differences event study identifies a causal decrease of 17 and 40 percentage points on the year-on-year growth rate of overall purchases in March and April 2020. We document a stronger impact of the crisis in more central and more urban municipalities, due to a combination of the sectorial composition effect of the local economy and the sharper confinement behavioral effect in these locations. We discuss the importance of tourism for the results.

Economic impact of targeted government responses to COVID-19: Evidence from the large-scale clusters in Seoul.

We estimate the economic impact of South Korea's targeted responses to the large-scale COVID-19 clusters in a highly concentrated business area (Guro) and a highly concentrated entertainment area (Itaewon) in Seoul, respectively. We find that foot traffic and retail sales decreased only within a 300 m radius and recovered to their pre-outbreak level after four weeks in the case of the Guro cluster. The reductions appear to be driven by temporary business closures rather than by citizens' risk avoidance behavior. However, the adverse economic impacts measured by foot traffic and retail sales of another outbreak of the COVID-19 cluster in Itaewon were persistent. Our results imply that the effects of less intense but more targeted COVID-19 interventions, such as pinpointed, temporary closures of businesses, can differ by underlying geographical characteristics.

Tracking the COVID-19 crisis with high-resolution transaction data.

Payments systems generate vast amounts of naturally occurring transaction data rarely used for constructing official statistics. We consider billions of transactions from card data from a large bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, as an alternative source of information for measuring consumption. We show, via validation against official consumption measures, that transaction data complements national accounts and consumption surveys. We then analyse the impact of COVID-19 in Spain, and document: (i) strong consumption responses to business closures, but smaller effects for capacity restrictions; (ii) a steeper decline in spending in rich neighbourhoods; (iii) higher mobility for residents of lower-income neighbourhoods, correlating with increased disease incidence.

What pandemic inflation tells: Old habits die hard.

COVID-19 has led to changes in individuals' consumption habits, which will cause the calculation of inflation based on the average consumption basket to give distorted information. Using debit and credit card spending data of Turkey, we build CPI weights and compute an alternative pandemic consumption basket price index for Jan 2020-Feb 2021. Our findings show that the pandemic inflation is higher than the official inflation rate during the first lockdown, suggesting a behavioral change in consumption. However, in the reopening period, old habits come back. During the second lockdown, the difference between the pandemic and the official inflation rates is trivial in comparison with the first lockdown.

Political beliefs affect compliance with government mandates.

We use the state-mandated stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic as a setting to study whether political beliefs inhibit compliance with government orders. Using geolocation data sourced from smartphones, we find residents in Republican counties are less likely to completely stay at home after a state order has been implemented relative to those in Democratic counties. Debit card transaction data shows that Democrats are more likely to switch to remote spending after state orders are implemented. Heterogeneity in factors such as Covid-19 risk exposure, geography, and county characteristics do not completely rule out our findings, suggesting political beliefs are an important determinant in the effectiveness of government mandates. Political alignment with officials giving orders may partially explain these partisan differences.

The effect of COVID-19 lockdown and the subsequent reopening on consumption in Iran.

We use country-wide data on all electronic payments in point-of-sale (POS) and online terminals of Iran to study the change in the pattern of consumption and online-offline substitution during the COVID-19 lockdown and after the relaxation of restrictions in May and June. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that during the strictest lockdown month, growth in value of transactions dropped by 41% compared to the benchmark month before the pandemic. After lifting the lockdown, the growth rose by 12% above the benchmark month. We also find that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in online transactions of activities with online terminals and has had a persistent effect on consumer preference for online shopping even after the reopening of the economy.

Weighting bias and inflation in the time of COVID-19: evidence from Swiss transaction data.

Sharp changes in consumer expenditure may bias inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using public data from debit card transactions, I quantify these changes in consumer spending, update CPI basket weights and construct an alternative price index to measure the effect of the COVID-induced weighting bias on the Swiss consumer price index. I find that inflation was higher during the lock-down than suggested by CPI inflation. The annual inflation rate of the COVID price index was -0.4% by April 2020, compared to -1.1% of the equivalent CPI. Persistent "low-touch" consumer behavior can further lead to inflation being underestimated by more than a quarter of a percentage point until the end of 2020.