We are also thankful to Sciensano, the Belgian institute for health, for providing us with anonymized data for COVID-19 cases, tests, and vaccinations.

Takeaway: Understanding consumer heterogeneity & the changing roles of pandemic severity, NPIs, & vaccines is vital. Policies need to account for these varied impacts across groups & time for effective crisis response. 🧵8/8

Finding 3: The pandemic's impact varied for different households (hhs). i) Lower-income hhs cut spending more from infection fears. ii) Higher-wealth hhs cut spending more in strict lockdowns. iii) Older hhs reacted more strongly to both infection rates & NPIs. 🧵7/8

Vaccinations didn't just boost spending directly, they also reduced the negative impact of BOTH infection fears and government restrictions. Higher vaccination coverage = smaller consumption drops from infections fears & NPIs. 🧵6/8

Finding 2: Good news! Higher local vaccination rates significantly boosted household consumption 📈. A 1% increase in fully vaccinated adults in a municipality lifted weekly spending by ~0.04% on average. 🧵5/8

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

The COVID-19 pandemic hit economies hard, especially household consumption. But was it the virus itself, government restrictions, or something else driving the changes? And how did this evolve over different waves and with vaccines? 🧵2/8