Kantur Zeynep, Özcan Gülserim
Department of Economics, Başkent University, Ankara 06790, Turkey.
Department of Economics, Atılım University, Ankara 06830, Turkey.
Econ Lett. 2021 Jul;204:109907. doi: 10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109907. Epub 2021 May 15.
COVID-19 has led to changes in individuals' consumption habits, which will cause the calculation of inflation based on the average consumption basket to give distorted information. Using debit and credit card spending data of Turkey, we build CPI weights and compute an alternative pandemic consumption basket price index for Jan 2020-Feb 2021. Our findings show that the pandemic inflation is higher than the official inflation rate during the first lockdown, suggesting a behavioral change in consumption. However, in the reopening period, old habits come back. During the second lockdown, the difference between the pandemic and the official inflation rates is trivial in comparison with the first lockdown.
新冠疫情导致了个人消费习惯的改变，这将使基于平均消费篮子计算的通货膨胀率给出失真信息。利用土耳其的借记卡和信用卡消费数据，我们构建了消费者物价指数（CPI）权重，并计算了2020年1月至2021年2月的替代性疫情期间消费篮子价格指数。我们的研究结果表明，在首次封锁期间，疫情期间的通货膨胀率高于官方通货膨胀率，这表明消费行为发生了变化。然而，在重新开放期间，旧习惯又回来了。在第二次封锁期间，与首次封锁相比，疫情期间的通货膨胀率与官方通货膨胀率之间的差异微不足道。
