Finding 1: Both higher local COVID positivity rates & stricter government measures led to bigger consumption drops. BUT their importance shifted! Fear of infection dominated Wave 1, while NPIs mattered more in Wave 2. By Wave 3, both hit spending hard. 🧵4/8

Thanks to BNP Paribas Fortis, we used a unique dataset of anonymized bank transactions. This allowed us to retrieve consumption data, which we combined with municipal indicators for COVID-19 severity (cases/tests), government stringency (NPIs), & vaccination rates. 🧵3/8

🚨 Just published!

📄 Our new paper w/ Selien De Schryder, KoenSchoors & Johannes Weytjens explores how COVID severity, NPIs & vaccines heterogeneously impacted household consumption in Belgium 🇧🇪, using unique bank data.

Check it out:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jm...

🧵1/8