In response to the spillovers of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, many governments paid cash transfers to households. We examine the effect of this fiscal policy instrument on households in two emerging economies, Vietnam and Thailand. Our analysis is based representative population surveys...

This paper examines how households adjusted their consumption behavior in response to COVID-19 infection risk during the early phase of the pandemic. We use a monthly consumption survey specifically designed by the German Statistical Office covering the second wave of COVID-19 infections from...

This paper examines the effect of COVID-19 policies on consumer spending using bank card transaction data from Norway. Taking advantage of variation in COVID-19 policies over time and across space in the four largest municipalities in the country, we investigate the heterogeneity of effects of...

Using representative household surveys conducted in Thailand and Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that the marginal propensity to consume is signicantly larger for positive than for negative income shocks. Moreover, we discover that the savings position plays a crucial role, as the...

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...

As part of Germany’s fiscal response to the Covid-19 pandemic, parents received three payments totalling e450 per child. Randomization in the payment dates and daily scanner data allow us to identify the effects of these transfers on household spending. We find a significant but small spending...

We review early evidence on how household consumption behavior has evolved over the pandemic and how different groups of households have responded to fiscal stimulus programs. Due to the scarcity of evidence for Europe, our review focuses on evidence from the US. Notwithstanding the...

We analyze the novel transactional card expenditure data for Germany and Austria provided by Fable Data. We describe key features of the data in terms of the coverage of expenditure items, payment channels, and the distribution of expenditures across regions and time. We highlight strengths and...

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...

We use monthly and daily transaction data from Iran, disaggregated by provinces, good and service categories, and retail store segments to gauge the impact of government emergency loans on consumption patterns. We find that emergency loans are positively related with higher consumption of...