Topic Consumers

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. Many of these experiments are published in top economics and finance journals. The evidence shows that financial education programs have, on average, positive causal treatment effects on financial knowledge ...

Financial Education is Effective and Efficient

Consumer Debt: Many Borrowers Unaware of Their Interest Rates; Cost Display Influences Likelihood of Accepting Credit Scenario

The consumer debt of households in Germany totals in the triple-digit billions and is characterized by a wide range of interest rates. Despite the high volume of debt, many people do not know the terms of their consumer credit contracts. This report analyzes new survey data on general knowledge about typical forms of consumer credit, such as the overdraft facility and consumer loans. Women tend to ...

Ignorance, Intention and Stochastic Outcomes

In sequential interactions, both the agent’s intention and the outcome of his choice may influence the principal’s action. While outcomes are typically observable, intentions are more likely to be hidden, leaving potential wiggle room for the principal when deciding on a reciprocating action. We employ a controlled experiment to investigate how intentions and outcome affect the principal’s actions ...

Where is the Consumer Center? A Case of St. Petersburg

In an urban economy, the distribution of people and real estate prices depends on the location of the central business district of a city. As distance from the city center increases, both prices and population density diminish, for travel costs increase in terms of time and money. As manufacturing gradually leaves the cities, the importance of consumer amenities as attractors of population to the urban ...

Fairness in Markets and Market Experiments

Whether pro-social preferences identified in economic laboratory experiments survive in natural market contexts is an important and contested issue. We investigate how fairness in a laboratory experiment framed explicitly as a market exchange relates to preferences for fair trade products elicited before and at the end of the market experiment. We find that the willingness to buy at a higher price...

Consumption and Subjective Expectations: Empirical Evidence and Structural Estimation

The Value of Data for Prediction Policy Problems: Evidence from Antibiotic Prescribing

This is an online seminar using Cisco Webex. You will receive the login data with the invitation to the talk. Abstract:   Large-scale personal data collection for the purpose of personalized predictions has been driven by high expectations of efficiency gains in many business and policy settings. Yet, quantifying the trade-off between the costs of linking disconnected silos of personal...

Financial Education Measures Are Effective: Germany Should Develop a National Strategy for Financial Education

The OECD recommends its member countries implement national strategies for financial education. Many other countries, such as China and India, also have such strategies, whereas Germany does not. The strongest reason for rejecting such a strategy is the supposition that financial education interventions are ineffective. Using all available randomized experimental studies, this study investigates and ...

Financial Literacy: Thai Middle-Class Women Do Not Lag Behind

This research studies the stylized fact of a “gender gap” in that women tend to have lower financial literacy than men. Our data which samples middle-class people from Bangkok does not show a gender gap for those with at least minimum wage earnings. This result is not explained by men’s low financial literacy, nor by women’s high income and good education. Rather, country characteristics may influence ...