Covid-19 briefing: tracking economic variables in real time

During the current pandemic, economic variables have moved quickly and by large magnitudes. Given the publication lags for official data this has led to a greater emphasis on higher-frequency and/or more timely measures to track the economic impact of the pandemic and gauge the state of the economy in real time. This post looks at the emerging body of work in this area, with a particular focus on real-time measures of consumer expenditure and activity in the labour market.

 
Consumer Expenditure

Several recent papers have sought to track consumer expenditures by examining the transactions of at least several thousand anonymised users of a bank or fintech company. These granular, timely microdata have been used both to gauge the timing and magnitude of total consumption, as well as to examine which expenditure items and income groups drove the fall in consumption.

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Πηγή: bankunderground.co.uk