E-commerce during Covid in Spain: One “Click” does not fit All
The share of e-commerce in total credit-card spending boomed during Covid in Spain. In particular, women, youth, and urban consumers used e-commerce proportionally more during the pandemic, especially for services. Using a unique proprietary dataset on credit card transactions, we test conjectures about consumers’ behavior (based on fear, hoarding, or learning) during Covid. Overall, e-commerce share reverted to its pre-Covid trend as the pandemic waned. However, some consumers with lower pre-Covid e-commerce usage tend to permanently use more e-commerce, supporting the conjecture of “learning by locking” for these individuals.
Tracking Economic and Financial Policies During COVID-19: An Announcement-Level Database
We introduce a new comprehensive announcement-level database tracking the extraordinary
fiscal, monetary, prudential, and other policies that countries adopted in response to Covid-19. The database
provides detailed information, including sizes where available, for 28 granular policies adopted by 74 countries
during 2020. About 5,500 policy measures were announced during this period. Importantly, the database is
organized and presented in a format easy for researchers to use in empirical analyses. Announcements were
highly correlated across the broad fiscal, monetary, and prudential categories and at more granular levels.
Advanced economies (AEs) introduced larger fiscal measures than emerging and developing economies
(EMDEs) and relied primarily on large unconventional monetary policies. Bank capital requirements were relaxed
widely in both AEs and EMs, while relaxation of provisioning requirements was more common among EMs.
Supervisory expectations and reporting requirements were widely relaxed.