Blog Post
The growing availability of real-time, high-frequency financial data, from credit-card transactions and bank records to digital payment platforms, is transforming economic research. Such sources reveal new patterns in spending, saving, and broader macroeconomic dynamics. Their granularity supports in-depth urban or regional analyses and enables the creation of real-time economic indicators that capture shifts in economic activity before official statistics are released. Taken together, such new data streams offer researchers opportunities to answer questions that were previously out of reach, improving our understanding of financial decision-making and the effects of economic policy for businesses and the financial industry.
Recognizing both the promise and the practical challenges of working with such data, BERD Academy and the ifo Institute’s Economics & Business Data Center hosted a one-day workshop, “Novel Financial Data for Research: Access and Applications,” on November 6, 2025, at LMU Munich. The event brought together researchers and practitioners to share empirical insights, discuss methodological hurdles, and compare experiences navigating the growing pool of financial data sources. Responding to organizers’ feedback, presenters generously incorporated hands-on insights into their talks, sharing practical details about their data sources, access pathways, and the operational challenges of working with different types of financial data.
A special highlight on the day was the keynote lecture of Steffen Meyer (Aarhus University) on “Financial Markets and Private Investors: Data Sources, Research Results, and Perspectives Ahead”. In his talk, Steffen walked the audience through a series of insightful projects on investment behavior using different sources of financial data, emphasizing both the opportunities and challenges these sources present. A key message brought the audience back to the roots of the research process: strong empirical work begins with well-formulated and developed research questions and careful identifications strategies, with data acquisition being a means to that end, and not a goal in itself.
The workshop opened with a session on how households adjust to rate changes. Philip Schnorpfeil (Goethe University Frankfurt) presented joint work on how borrowers respond to interest-rate changes in the context of the German mortgage market. Their project combines data from a large bank, a letter RCT and an online survey. Following this, Winfried Koeniger (University of St. Gallen) presented work that estimates the effect of a temporary VAT cut on consumption, also in a German context. Their team leverages novel transaction-level credit card data from Fable.
The next session shifted attention to data sources and novel applications. Oliver Gabriel (Mastercard Services) presented various datasets based on Mastercard’s anonymized credit-card transaction data and specific applications from collaborations with researchers, business and governmental bodies. Next, Marie-Theres Gasser (University of Regensburg) presented an applied project using Mastercard transaction data to study the local consumption effects of UEFA Euro 2024. The study leverages spatial variation to identify how major sporting events reshape economic activity in host regions. Galina Andreeva (University of Edinburgh) provided a comprehensive overview of the opportunities and challenges of research using personal financial transactions or open banking, sharing insights from multiple projects she developed at the Credit Research Center, especially regarding financial vulnerability. The session concluded with a talk introducing the Seasn App developed by the team of Andreas Hackethal (Goethe University Frankfurt). The app allows researchers to directly access anonymized user data on household finances, conduct ad hoc surveys and perform various information treatments. The Seasn App stands out as an inspiring case of how researchers can take an entrepreneurial approach to address data access challenges.
The afternoon continued with the presentation of Moritz Nardini (LMU Munich) on round-up savings products and stock-market asset accumulation. The authors collaborate with a German FinTech and conduct a lab-in-the-field-experiment analyzing how providing access to a round-up app impact consumer financial behavior. Jonas Bruhin (University of St. Gallen) presented evidence on how households adjust consumption in response to electricity price shocks in the Swiss context. Jonas has access to the majority of digital payments in Switzerland through a collaboration with Worldline Schweiz. In the last talk of the day, Emanuel Renkl (TU Munich) shared joint work on analyzing employees’ consumption response to wage increases using anonymized transaction-level bank data. Preliminary results suggest that employees do not increase spending or borrowing in anticipation of a salary increase.
Across sessions, a recurring theme emerged: while novel financial data unlock new empirical insights, they also require researchers to develop new skills, build industry collaborations, and engage in careful methodological thinking. The workshop highlighted the value of creating spaces where a fruitful exchange can occur, not only to showcase results, but also to discuss practical issues of data access, and share the opportunities and challenges that come with novel large-scale financial data.
We are grateful to all participants for their contributions and creating such an engaging atmosphere. We would also like to thank our colleagues at the BERD Academy for making this event happen and for our continued collaboration.
Cristina Rujan & Sebastian Wichert
Link to Materials: https://github.com/BERD-NFDI/Novel-Financial-Data-for-Research-Access-and-Applications
