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Preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the COVID‐19 first wave
In times of heightened uncertainty, consumers face incentives to build up precautionary stocks of essential supplies. We study consumer spending dynamics during one such time, the first infection wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic, using household scanner data covering fast‐moving consumer goods in the U...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209877/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34176997 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12271 |
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author | O'Connell, Martin de Paula, Áureo Smith, Kate |
author_facet | O'Connell, Martin de Paula, Áureo Smith, Kate |
author_sort | O'Connell, Martin |
collection | PubMed |
description | In times of heightened uncertainty, consumers face incentives to build up precautionary stocks of essential supplies. We study consumer spending dynamics during one such time, the first infection wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic, using household scanner data covering fast‐moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom. We document large increases in demand for storable products, such as food staples and household supplies, in the days before lockdown. Households in all socio‐economic groups exhibit unusually high demand pre‐lockdown, but there is a clear gradient, with the largest demand spikes for wealthier households. Although stories of people purchasing extreme amounts received a lot of attention, higher aggregate demand was mainly driven by more households than usual choosing to buy storable products, with only small increases in average quantities bought on a given trip. Temporary limits on the number of units per transaction, introduced following the demand spike, are therefore unlikely to lead to the avoidance of stock‐outs. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8209877 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82098772021-06-21 Preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the COVID‐19 first wave O'Connell, Martin de Paula, Áureo Smith, Kate Fisc Stud Original Articles In times of heightened uncertainty, consumers face incentives to build up precautionary stocks of essential supplies. We study consumer spending dynamics during one such time, the first infection wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic, using household scanner data covering fast‐moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom. We document large increases in demand for storable products, such as food staples and household supplies, in the days before lockdown. Households in all socio‐economic groups exhibit unusually high demand pre‐lockdown, but there is a clear gradient, with the largest demand spikes for wealthier households. Although stories of people purchasing extreme amounts received a lot of attention, higher aggregate demand was mainly driven by more households than usual choosing to buy storable products, with only small increases in average quantities bought on a given trip. Temporary limits on the number of units per transaction, introduced following the demand spike, are therefore unlikely to lead to the avoidance of stock‐outs. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-06-08 2021-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8209877/ /pubmed/34176997 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12271 Text en © 2021 The Authors. Fiscal Studies published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. on behalf of Institute for Fiscal Studies https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Articles O'Connell, Martin de Paula, Áureo Smith, Kate Preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the COVID‐19 first wave |
title | Preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the COVID‐19 first wave |
title_full | Preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the COVID‐19 first wave |
title_fullStr | Preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the COVID‐19 first wave |
title_full_unstemmed | Preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the COVID‐19 first wave |
title_short | Preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the COVID‐19 first wave |
title_sort | preparing for a pandemic: spending dynamics and panic buying during the covid‐19 first wave |
topic | Original Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209877/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34176997 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12271 |
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