Emil Toft Hansen forsvarer sin ph.d.-afhandling

Emil Toft Hansen forsvarer sin ph.d.-afhandling:"Essays on Consumer Behaviour and Advances in Economic Accounting"

Ph.d.-forsvaret foregår i CSS 26.2.21. Link til deltagelse via Zoom følger her: https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/2336281735

En elektronisk kopi af afhandlingen kan fås ved henvendelse til: charlotte.jespersen@econ.ku.dk

Bedømmelsesudvalg

  • Lektor Jeppe Druedahl, Økonomisk Institut, Københavns Universitet, Danmark (formand)
  • Professor Benjamin Moll, London School of Economics
  • Assistant Professor Arna Olafsson, Copenhagen Business School

Abstract

This thesis consists of four self-contained research papers. All papers share in common that they build on transaction data from a large Scandinavian retail bank, and that they in some way concerns consumer spending.

In the first and second chapter, written together with Asger Lau Andersen, Niels Johannesen and Adam Sheridan, we explore the consumer reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the first chapter we use transaction data from a large bank in Scandinavia to estimate the effect of social distancing laws on consumer spending during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March-May 2020. We exploit that Denmark and Sweden were similarly exposed to the pandemic but only Denmark imposed significant restrictions on social and economic activities. We estimate that aggregate spending dropped by around 25% in Sweden and, as a result of the shutdown, by four additional percentage points in Denmark. This suggests that most of the economic contraction was caused by the virus itself and occurred regardless of social distancing laws.

In the second chapter, we zoom in on the consumer response in Denmark and expand the time horizon to cover the entire first Covid-19 wave from March to August 2020. We document that while aggregate spending initially dropped by close to 30% it recovered almost fully towards the end of the first wave. We further show that spending plummeted in categories severely affected by supply restrictions, but increased in unaffected categories. Individual exposure to health risks and supply restrictions was associated with much larger spending cuts than exposure to income risk and unemployment.

In the third chapter, written with Asger Lau Andersen, Kilian Huber, Niels Johannesen and Ludwig Straub, we propose and implement a system of disaggregated economic accounts. Such a system comprehensively disaggregates national accounting flows between small groups of consumers and producers, including consumption, income, international trade, and government transactions. We develop guidelines allowing researchers to measure disaggregated accounts using different types of “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches. In our implementation, we measure a disaggregated system for the Danish economy by assigning all Danish consumers and production establishment to small region-by-industry cells. Unlike existing accounting systems, we measure the entire circular flow of money among consistently defined small groups, allowing us to develop facts on how different consumer and producer groups are connected. We develop a model with many sectors and regions that matches the disaggregated system and use it to show how disaggregated accounts improve our understanding of the distributional consequences of shocks.

In the fourth chapter, I study what drives the demand for high-cost consumption loans, e.g., kviklån. I utilize the bank transaction data to identify usage of high-cost consumption loans as well as to extract information on spending, earnings and liquidity. I investigate the extent to which adverse events drive loan demand, or if it is more likely to be explained by borrowers' personality traits. My findings indicate that high-cost borrowers have self-control problems and that high-cost loans are likely used to finance impulse spending or function as a way to prolong a credit-financed spell of overconsumption.