During the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic, the US Congress passed the CARES Act that (among other measures) provides direct payments to households. Using a large debit cards database, we analyze consumer expenditures following the stimulus payments. We observe Zip code level daily transactions (approx....

Consumer response to transitory income shocks is of academic interest in many disciplines. During the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic, the Federal government in the US passed the CARES Act that among other measures provides direct payments to households. In this article we utilize a large database on...