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

Abstract

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.