Page 63 - Revista del Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo del INEI - Economía, Sociedad y Estadística N° 9

are operating, 64,7% reported decreased sales, 13,7% describes the Danish economy mathematically and
reported no change in sales, 7,2% reported an increase is used to predict economic trends or to analyze the
in sales, and 11,7% reported no sales (INEI, 2020). impact of public policies. This model is widely used in
the country’s financial and economic sectors, where
• Denmark the main users are ministries and financial entities. A
module was created for this model, with the purpose
In Denmark, Danmark Statistiks, the statistical agency of predicting the economic impact of COVID-19. As
of the country, has made public a series of experimental such, users can enter certain parameters relating to
statistics that measure the impact of COVID-19 on the duration and impact of the pandemic, and obtain
both the economy and society. Given that they are estimates on the macroeconomic effects.
experimental statistics, whose methodologies are
subject to continuous changes, they are not part of • Spain
official statistics, which have more solid methodologies.
Nevertheless, these statistics generate useful and timely One of the projects at the Instituto Nacional de
data for decision-making. Estadística (INE) consists of analyzing the mobility of
the population during the COVID-19 state of emergency
Concerning the health area, this agency publishes using mobile phone GPS data (INE, 2020). With the
statistics on daily number of tests carried out, infections, collaboration and data from the three main mobile
hospitalizations, deaths and recoveries. Furthermore, phone providers – which account for roughly 80% of the
Danmark Statistik, publishes data comparing this year’s Spanish market – this study analyzes daily population
number of deaths and an average of registered deaths mobility in the entire country.
between 2015 and 2019. In this way, the impact of
COVID-19 on the number of deaths can be observed. In order to analyze the movements of all observations,
the territory is divided in mobility areas and the
At the economic level, Danmark Statistik develops the providers define the residence and destination areas
Business Trend Survey and the Business Confidence for each observation. The residence area is defined as
Indicator, both aiming to measure the performance the area where the observation spends most of the
and confidence of various areas of the country. In order time between 0:00 and 6:00 hours, i.e., where a person
to monitor private consumer spending, the agency, in spends the night. The destination area is defined as the
collaboration with Danske Bank, one of the major Danish area where the observation spends most of its time
banks, released data that tracks monetary transactions between 10:00 and 16:00 hours, i.e., where a person
conducted by debit/credit cards, and with mobile works. When the residence and destination areas are
phones, from around one million consumers with bank obtained, INE can then observe the quantity of people
accounts at this bank. It was found that private consumer that leave their area of residence during the day during
spending decreased in March this year compared to the quarantine period and compare it to data during
March last year. It is worth mentioning that, despite the “regular” period, i.e., the data is compared to data
de high prevalence of digital and electronic means of during a regular week before the state of emergency .
1
payment in Denmark, Danmark Statistik warns that INE determined that during quarantine period that
the information provided does not necessarily reflect began from mid-March this year, mobility decreased
the entire population’s private consumer spending, considerably compared to “regular” times. Moreover,
since cash spending and bank transfers are not taken the Spanish population’s mobility increased starting in
into account. May, as restrictions were gradually lifted. The mobility
trend is shown in figure 3.
In line with the previous idea, the Danish NSO works
with a macroeconomic model called ADAM. ADAM

1 For the “regular” period, the mean mobility was computed for the days of Monday 18th of November to Thursday 21rst of November,
2019.
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