Topic Consumers

The Financial Accelerator, Wages, and Optimal Monetary Policy

I study the effects of labor market outcomes on firms' loan demand and credit intermediation. I first show in partial equilibrium that the presence of frictions in the banking sector lowers the capital factor demand elasticity to changes in real wages. This finding helps to connect the substitutability of labor and capital with credit conditions. Second, I use a new Keynesian banking model with an ...

Financial Education Affects Financial Knowledge and Downstream Behaviors

We study the rapidly growing literature on the causal effects of financial education programs in a meta-analysis of 76 randomized experiments with a total sample size of over 160,000 individuals. The evidence shows that financial education programs have, on average, positive causal treatment effects on financial knowledge and downstream financial behaviors. Treatment effects are economically meaningful ...

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 ...

Four Essays on the Economics of Digitization

Der technische Fortschritt in den Informationstechnologien eröffnet beispiellose wirtschaftliche Möglichkeiten. Durch eine drastische Reduzierung der Kosten dieser Technologien ist es heute so einfach wie noch nie, Informationen und Wissen zu akquirieren, zu kommunizieren und Produkte und Dienstleistungen zu handeln. Die damit einhergehende Umwälzung der Wirtschaft wirft zahlreiche ökonomische Fragestellungen ...

Mobile Money is Driving Financial Development in Africa

Mobile money is an innovation that allows financial transactions to be performed via a cell phone. Even in poor regions of Africa, almost everyone has a cell phone; therefore, mobile money could both contribute to the continent’s economic growth and ensure that no Africans are excluded from access to financial services. However, DIW Berlin data from Uganda show that mobile money is actually used less ...

Consumption-Oriented Policy Instruments for Fostering Greenhouse Gas Mitigation

Most policy instruments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have focused on producers, and on the energy efficiency of buildings, vehicles and other products. Behavioural changes related to climate change also impact ‘in-use’ emissions, and potentially, emissions both ‘upstream’ (including from imported goods) and ‘downstream’ (eg disposal). Consumption-oriented policies may provide avenues to ...

Hours Risk and Wage Risk: Repercussions over the Life-Cycle

We decompose permanent earnings risk into contributions from hours and wage shocks. To distinguish between hours shocks, modeled as innovations to the marginal disutility of work, and labor supply reactions to wage shocks we formulate a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply. Both permanent wage and hours shocks are important to explain earnings risk, but wage shocks have greater relevance. ...

Libra, Bitcoin & Co. - Determinants of Non-cash Payments and Alternative Money: Editorial

Determinants of Financial Literacy among German Students: An Empirical Analysis

Finanzkompetenzen haben für die gesellschaftliche Teilhabe eine hohe Bedeutung. Dieser Beitrag führt eine empirische Evaluation der Determinanten der Finanzkompetenz von Studierenden an einer deutschen Hochschule durch. Ein weiteres Ziel ist auch die Identifizierung der geschlechtsspezifischen Unterschiede bei der Finanzkompetenz. Die Evaluierung basiert auf der Definition und den Erhebungen zur Finanzkompetenz, ...

The Effect of Self-Control on Borrowing: Experimental Evidence

This paper examines the effect of reduced self-control on debt-taking in a laboratory experiment. We manipulate self-control using an ego depletion task and show that it is effective. Following the ego depletion task, participants can anonymously buy hot drinks on credit. We find no significant average effects, but find that treated individuals that have low financial literacy are more likely to buy ...