Impacts of COVID-19 on consumer spending
Research on the impact of COVID-19 on consumer spending undertaken by Professor John Wilson and Dr Dimitris Chronopoulos, both from the Centre for Responsible Banking and Finance (CRBF), and Marcel Lukas from Heriot-Watt University has been released as a CRBF Working Paper.
The research finds a significant decline in discretionary spending during the spread of the virus and throughout the period following the UK government imposed lockdown. The results also show a strong increase in groceries spending consistent with panic buying and stockpiling behaviour in the two weeks following the World Health Organisation (WHO) announcement describing COVID-19 as a pandemic.
Analysis was carried out on a dataset comprising approximately 100,000 consumers and 20 million transactions. The study is ongoing and subject to frequent updating as further data becomes available.
The research provides useful insights to policymakers monitoring the economic impacts arising from the spread of COVID-19 and the public health measures imposed to mitigate the health costs of the crisis.
The authors discuss the study in VoxEU.org, the Centre for Economic Policy Research portal, at Real-time consumer spending responses to the COVID-19 crisis and government lockdown (6 May 2020).
See the paper: Consumer Spending Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Assessment of Great Britain.
Read more:
The National: Slump in spending began before coronavirus lockdown, study reveals.
The Times: Coronavirus in Scotland: Scots stockpiled early, spending study shows.
The publication follows a CRBF Working Paper by Professor Ross Brown and Dr Augusto Rocha, also released in April 2020, which analyses real time data on entrepreneurial finance investments in China during the coronavirus outbreak.
See the paper: Entrepreneurial Uncertainty during the Covid-19 Crisis: Mapping the Temporal Dynamics of Entrepreneurial Finance.
Read more:
The Conversation: Chinese start-ups are being starved of venture capital – with worrying omens for the west.
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