The Impact of the Pandemic and Energy-Food Shocks on European Consumers’ “Everyday Spending”
Working paper
A new OECD dataset of monthly card spending for 12 countries traces how “everyday spending” shifted through the pandemic and the energy/food price shocks.
New OECD Working Paper, with Sebastian Barnes and David Haugh (OECD Economics Department) and Luis Monteiro and Sidharth Goel (Mastercard Economics Institute):
Built from a new high-frequency dataset of aggregated, anonymised Mastercard transaction data — monthly spending across 12 European countries and 9 categories from 2018 to 2024 — the paper tracks “everyday spending,” the part of consumption closest to households’ day-to-day lives. It finds a strong post-pandemic recovery followed by a marked slowdown since 2022, with poorer regions hit hardest by the squeeze on essentials like food and energy.
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