La Banque Postale; Insee: authors' calculations.
Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2025 4:51 am
Scope: France, sample of La Banque Postale's main banked customers present throughout the period January 2019-June 2021 after filtering for inactive accounts.
Track household spending day by day
The very high degree of precision in the information collected on this sample makes it possible to zoom in not only on categories of people, but also on specific types of expenditure. For example, a study published in July 2023 uses the possibility of identifying fuel purchases among the bank card spending of Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale customers to assess the consequences of the sharp price increases linked to the surge in oil prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Thanks to these gambling database data, it was possible to analyze the consequences of this sharp increase, slowed by the implementation of price shields, and the reactions to the increase in fuel prices of consumers according to their income level or type of housing. Thus, at least in the short term, consumers slightly adjust their fuel consumption to price variations. The quarter of the wealthiest households, who consume more fuel on average, benefited more from this measure, but this reduction represented a smaller share of their income ( Figure 2 ). Even more precisely, information on the place of purchase makes it possible to estimate the share of cross-border purchases in the consumption of certain goods, such as tobacco ( Hillion , 2024) or fuel ( Adam et al . , 2024), two products that are more heavily taxed in France than in neighboring countries.
Track household spending day by day
The very high degree of precision in the information collected on this sample makes it possible to zoom in not only on categories of people, but also on specific types of expenditure. For example, a study published in July 2023 uses the possibility of identifying fuel purchases among the bank card spending of Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale customers to assess the consequences of the sharp price increases linked to the surge in oil prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Thanks to these gambling database data, it was possible to analyze the consequences of this sharp increase, slowed by the implementation of price shields, and the reactions to the increase in fuel prices of consumers according to their income level or type of housing. Thus, at least in the short term, consumers slightly adjust their fuel consumption to price variations. The quarter of the wealthiest households, who consume more fuel on average, benefited more from this measure, but this reduction represented a smaller share of their income ( Figure 2 ). Even more precisely, information on the place of purchase makes it possible to estimate the share of cross-border purchases in the consumption of certain goods, such as tobacco ( Hillion , 2024) or fuel ( Adam et al . , 2024), two products that are more heavily taxed in France than in neighboring countries.