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

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Change log

Authors

Garcia, Juan R. 
Ortiz, Álvaro 
Rodrigo, Tomasa 

Abstract

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.

Description

Keywords

Computer science and artificial intelligence, Research articles, national accounts, transaction data, consumption, COVID-19

Journal Title

Royal Society Open Science

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2054-5703

Volume Title

8

Publisher

The Royal Society
Sponsorship
H2020 European Research Council (Consolidator Grant 101001221, Consolidator Grant 864863)
Economic and Social Research Council (Award ES/L009633/1)
Leverhulme Trust (Philip Leverhulme Prize)