Local Lockdown and Regional Recovery: what can real-time consumption data tell us?

• Benedict Guttman-Kenney interviewed by
• Tim Phillips
• 3 Mar 2021

The UK's recovery is heavily weighted towards the “home counties” around outer London and the South. Utilising Fable Data: a real-time source of consumption data that is a highly correlated, leading indicator of Bank of England and Office for National Statistics data, Ben Guttman-Kenney and colleagues observe a stark contrast between strong online spending growth while offline spending contracts with patterns of regional difference in spending matching lockdown tier levels. To prevent such COVID-19-driven regional inequalities from becoming persistent they propose governments introduce temporary, regionally-targeted interventions in 2021.You can read the full paper behind this research here: A Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending John Gathergood, Fabian Gunzinger, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Edika Quispe-Torreblanca, and Neil Stewart https://cepr.online/CE67