TY - JOUR
AU - Carvalho, Vasco M.
AU - Garcia, Juan R.
AU - Hansen, Stephen
AU - Ortiz, Álvaro
AU - Rodrigo, Tomasa
AU - Rodríguez Mora, José V.
AU - Ruiz, Pep
PY - 2021
DA - August
TI - Tracking the COVID-19 crisis with high-resolution transaction data
JO - Royal Society Open Science
VL - 8
IS - 8
DO - https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210218
AB - 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.
PB - The Royal Society
UR - https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/efced66f-3629-4f1d-8a08-e741d1aa2472
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
KW - Digital health and technology
KW - Socioeconomic factors
ER