The IZA/Fable Data Consumption Indicator

Fable Data obtains card payment data directly from various financial institutions across Europe. The ingested data is enriched by proprietary models from Fable Data and is then homogenised and productised to generate a single pan-European dataset that’s updated on a daily basis. The original dataset includes transaction details such as date and spend amount, as well as customer and merchant information. Cardholders’ demographic details, are also provided. The merchant is identified and classified using a Merchant Category Code, and the location of the merchant is available. Methodology Each transaction in the data contains the amount paid, transaction date, and credit card identifier. The construction of the indicator involves collecting and anonymizing credit card transactions from January 2017 to March 2024 to compute a monthly consumption indicator for Germany from January 2018 onwards. The percentage change of monthly aggregate spending from the same month a year ago is computed using a one-year lookback rolling panel methodology. Availability & Access to Replication Package Aggregate monthly and quarterly data, along with Python code, are provided to replicate the construction of the IZA / Fable Data Consumption Indicator for Germany. This includes a comparison to official quarterly consumption data for Germany from Eurostat. The microdata used for monthly aggregates originates from Fable Data and is actively researched at the IDSC of IZA.