Author: Nikos Askitas

December IZA/Fable SWIPE Index at +9.9%

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The December flash estimate of the IZA/Fable SWIPE consumption index shows a 9.9% year-on-year increase in credit card spending in Germany for the first half of the month, compared to the same period in December 2023. The index is updated daily as more data comes in, providing increasingly complete monthly partials, and it remains to be seen how much of this growth will hold by the end of December.

A key factor behind this significant rise is the timing of Black Friday, which fell on November 29 this year, compared to November 24 in 2023. This shift moved part of the Black Friday splurge, including Cyber Monday purchases, from November into December. The late Black Friday also caused the final November consumption growth figure to stabilize at 4%, down from the 6% indicated in the flash estimate.

Linke to Paper: The IZA/Fable Swipe Consumption Index

Toll Index November 2024 – hovering around the mean

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The Toll Index was first proposed in IZA DP5522 which was published in the Journal of Forecasting. It has been widely covered in national and international media (selection):


Focus Magazin,
Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
Financial Times,
MoneyWeek,
WirtschaftsWoche,
CNN International,
DRS3 Swiss public radio,
Deutsche Welle.

The Toll index was redefined in 2024 to account for various toll-related policy changes like including lighter trucks in the system or adding roads to the toll road network.

Citation: “Nowcasting business cycles using toll data.” Journal of Forecasting 32:4 (2013): 299–306(with K. F. Zimmermann).

Toll Index October 2024

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The October value of the Toll Index reads at 100.7 continuing a multi-month positive trend. It is up 1.3% on Steptember 2024 and up 6.1% on October 2023.

The Border Crossing Toll Index is adjusted for number of weekdays, time, month and MAUT-policy-regime fixed effects. For the newly defined Toll Index see here. The smoothing used is what I call the eye-balling smoothing.

The Toll Index was first proposed in IZA DP5522 which was published in the Journal of Forecasting. It has been widely covered in national and international media (selection):


Focus Magazin,
Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
Financial Times,
MoneyWeek,
WirtschaftsWoche,
CNN International,
DRS3 Swiss public radio,
Deutsche Welle.

Citation: “Nowcasting business cycles using toll data.” Journal of Forecasting 32:4 (2013): 299–306(with K. F. Zimmermann).

Toll Index September 2024

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The September value of the Border Crossing Toll Index (just out) adjusted for number of weekdays, time, month and MAUT-policy-regime fixed effects (Figure 1) came at 100.6 continuing an improving trend of several months as can easily be seen in Figure 2 (smoothed). For the newly defined Toll Index see here.

Additionally Figure 3 shows the IZA/Fable SWIPE consumption index (raw in blue and adjusted for inflation in red). While neither goods transportation nor consumption is particularly strong they are both on a clear positive trend indicating that the Fall assessment of the German government which expects a .2% contraction for the year might be overly and unnecessarily pessimistic.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

The IZA/Fable Data Consumption Indicator

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We have just released a new consumption index for Germany just in time as macro-economic conditions are taking center stage again: global supply chain issues, geopolitical turmoil, economic slow-down in much of the world economy (e.g. China stimulus package, USA interest rate cuts, ECB rate cuts, or a mixed German business cycle and a government forecast of contraction in 2024 etc), climate phenomena, right wing populism or lesser but potentially impactful disruptions such as the advent of generative AI.

Final consumption amounts to over 70% of German GDP, whereas household final consumption (more likely to be in our data than, say, government final expenditures) amounts to over 50% of the German GDP. This demonstrates the importance of a consumption indicator for Germany and beyond. Consumption and the Labor Market intermediated by economic growth are interdependent like yin and yang.

Our indicator is informed by daily ingested data. The preliminary value for a given month will be released around the 20th of the month. Incoming data then updates the index daily until it is finalized 2-3 days after the end of the month.

All changes are reflected in the live graph of the index below.

The IZA/Fable Data Consumption Indicator for Germany is based on consumer and small business transactions data from FableData, a leading provider of anonymized, pan-European spending data. It is and IDSC product, introduced in a joint paper of mine with Fable coauthors A.B. Martinez and F.S. Cereda.

The embedded graph above is live in the sense that it is continuously updated in a programmatic manner and it is interactive in the sense that you can zoom in and out of it. Notice also that blue annotations mark important shocks and time regimes useful for understanding the data. In mid-2025 our indicator will cover France and the UK in addition.

If you want to embed it in your website feel free to visit https://fable.radar.iza.org and copy an embed code snippet (top right). We’d be happy to hear how you are using it.

Paper: The IZA/Fable Swipe Consumption Index