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Financial Education in Schools: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Studies

We study the literature on school financial education programs for children and youth via a quantitative meta-analysis of 37 (quasi-) experiments. We find that financial education treatments have, on average, sizeable impacts on financial knowledge (+0.33 SD), similar to educational interventions in other domains. Additionally, we document smaller effects on financial behaviors among students (+0.07 ...

Does Subsidized Care for Toddlers Increase Maternal Labor Supply?

Expanding public or publicly subsidized childcare has been a top social policy priority in many industrialized countries. It is supposed to increase fertility, promote children’s development and enhance mothers’ labor market attachment. In this paper, we analyze the causal effect of one of the largest expansions of subsidized childcare for children up to three years among industrialized countries on ...

Changes in Optimism and Pessimism in Response to Life Events: Evidence from Three Large Panel Studies

Although individuals vary in how optimistic they are about the future, one assumption that researchers make is that optimism is sensitive to changes in life events and circumstances. We examined how optimism and pessimism changed across the lifespan and in response to life events in three large panel studies (combined N = 74,886). In the American and Dutch samples, we found that optimism increased ...

Sustainable Development and Populism

All 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), following the guiding principle to leave no one behind. At the same time, rising populist movements increasingly influence the political debate in many countries by challenging multilateral cooperation and liberal democracy. This paper contains the first empirical study of the relationship between the SDGs and ...

Akzeptanz von assistiven Robotern im Pflege- und Gesundheitsbereich: Repräsentative Daten zeichnen ein klares Bild für Deutschland

Angesichts der Alterung der Gesellschaft und der hohen Kosten für die Unterstützung und Pflege in privaten Haushalten stellt sich die Frage, welche Rolle assistive Roboter spielen können. Dieser Beitrag richtet sich auf die Frage, inwieweit Roboter in der Pflege heute von der erwachsenen Bevölkerung in Deutschland akzeptiert werden. Und inwieweit beeinflussen Geschlecht, Alter und Erfahrung (beruflich, ...

How People Know Their Risk Preference

People differ in their willingness to take risks. Recent work found that revealed preference tasks (e.g., laboratory lotteries)—a dominant class of measures—are outperformed by survey-based stated preferences, which are more stable and predict real-world risk taking across different domains. How can stated preferences, often criticised as inconsequential “cheap talk,” be more valid and predictive ...

Labor Market and Distributional Effects of an Increase in the Retirement Age

We evaluate the labor market and distributional effects of an increase in the early retirement age (ERA) from 60 to 63 for women born after 1951. We use a regression discontinuity design which exploits the strong increase in the ERA between women born in 1951 and 1952. The analysis is based on the German microcensus which includes about 370,000 households per year. We focus on heterogeneous labor market ...

The Political Economy of Coal in Poland: Drivers and Barriers for a Shift away from Fossil Fuels

Poland is the largest hard coal and second largest lignite producer in the EU, generating around 80 percent of its electricity from coal. Resistance to a reduction in coal production and consumption comes from various actors, namely, coal corporations, unions, parts of civil society and the government – as well as their coalitions. Their opposition centres around the prospect of losing their business, ...

Abuse of Dominance and Antitrust Enforcement in the German Electricity Market

The Effect of Peer Observation on Consumption Choices: Evidence from a Lab-In-Field Experiment

We investigate the impact of peer observation on consumption decisions using a lab-in-field experiment. Respondents make consumption decisions either alone or under peer observation. We find evidence for peer effects. We are able to study these further by looking into the mechanism and performing detailed heterogeneity analysis. Concerning the mechanisms, we find evidence for an information channel. ...