Post Covid Era: Future of Economies and World Order
Comparison of Expenditures and Number of Transactions of Total Credit and Debit Cards in Pre and During Covid-19 in Turkey
Sinan DemirezenThe Covid-19 pandemic, which took hold of all the world in a short while, emerged with the first case recorded in China. After a time, the explanations of China World Health Organization announced this disease as an epidemic stemming from a virus with an unknown point of origin despite several rumors. The Organization had to acknowledge the disease as a pandemic due to the spreading of the virus being out of control soon after. On the other hand, Governments took stringent precautions to minimize the impact of the virus during this period. The most important of these was the lockdown, the obligation to wear a face mask, paying attention to personal hygiene, and banning the comings and goings to the countries unless necessary, keeping the quarantine period of patients under control. On the other hand, online education, working from home, and flexible working were other precautions methods. During the lockdown, people who had to spend time in their homes changed their nutrition habits, sleeping routines, shopping, and so on. Expenditures of the people were claimed to increase as general opinion in this period. For this purpose, the expenditures (and the number of transactions) were analyzed whether the same or different pre and during Covid-19 in terms of the credit and debit card expenditures and the number of credit and debit card transactions in this paper. The null hypothesis that these cards' expenditures (the number of transactions) during Covid-19 are not different from the pre-Covid-19 is tested against the alternative hypothesis that the expenditures (the number of transactions) are different. For the hypothesis test, the Man-Witney U test was employed because the assumptions of the two-independent t-test were violated. As a result of the analysis, it is inferred from the rejected null hypothesis that both the expenditures and the number of card transactions during Covid-19 are statistically different from the expenditures and the transactions of pre-Covid-19.