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We use daily transaction data in 214 cities to study the impact of COVID-19 on consumption after China's outbreak in late January 2020. Based on difference-in-difference estimation, daily offline consumption--via bank card and mobile Quick Response code transactions--fell by 32 percent, or 18.57 million renminbi (RMB) per city, during the 12-week period. The effect is prevalent across cities and is more pronounced in the dining-and-entertainment and travel categories. We infer that China's offline consumption decreased by over 1.22 trillion RMB, or 1.2 percent of China's 2019 GDP, in the 3-month postoutbreak period.
Chen et al. (Sat,) studied this question.