Publicação

What and how did people buy during the Great Lockdown?

Ver documento

Detalhes bibliográficos
Resumo:This paper uses novel and comprehensive data on electronic payments from SIBS, the main provider of point of sale terminals and on-line payments in Portugal, to study the impact of the Great Lockdown on purchases. The data aggregates all individual transactions into monthly observations, by municipality and sector, between 2018 and 2020. We employ a difference-in-differences event study that relies on the assumption that the monthly evolution of purchases in the first four months of 2020 would be parallel to that of the two previous years. We identify a massive causal impact on overall purchases, from a baseline year-on-year monthly growth rate of 10% to a decrease of 45%. The sign and magnitude of the impact varies considerably across sectors. Purchases of essential goods such as supermarkets and groceries increase mildly, contrasting with severe contractions in sectors that were closed by government order or depend heavily on tourism, including the leisure industry and restaurants. We find suggestive evidence of initial stockpiling of goods, postponing of essential expenditures, and rapid recovery of purchases in tech and entertainment, possibly to adapt to the confinement. Transactions with foreign-owned cards cause an even greater negative contraction. We disentangle the total effect into the intensive margin of the average transaction and the extensive margin of the number of transactions. Buyers adjust their shopping strategies in rational ways to minimize public health risks: they go less often to supermarkets and buy more each time, and visit local groceries more.
Autores principais:Carvalho, Bruno
Outros Autores:Peralta, Susana; Pereira dos Santos, João
Assunto:SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
Ano:2020
País:Portugal
Tipo de documento:working paper
Tipo de acesso:acesso aberto
Instituição associada:Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Idioma:inglês
Origem:Repositório Institucional da UNL

Registos relacionados

Atividades financiadas

Carregando projetos financiados...

Ver mais

Registos relacionados