We examine how the numeracy level of employees influences the quality of their on-the-job decisions. Based on an administrative dataset of a retail bank we relate the performance of loan officers in a standardized math test to the accuracy of their credit assessments of small business borrowers....

We examine how the numeracy level of employees influences their on-the-job performance. Based on an administrative dataset of a retail bank we relate the performance of loan officers in a standardized math test to the accuracy of their credit assessments of small business borrowers. We find that...

Using novel survey data, we examine attitudes towards money and to what extent they affect economic outcomes in Switzerland. We find that three main types of attitudes towards money co-exist: the prestige and power attitude, the money management attitude and the goal-oriented attitude. The...

In Eastern Europe a substantial share of bank deposits are denominated in foreign currency. Deposit euroization poses key challenges for monetary policy and financial sector supervision. On the one hand, it limits the effectiveness of monetary policy interventions. On the other hand, it...

We examine how an innovation in payment technology impacts on consumer payment choice and cash demand. We study the staggered introduction of contactless debit cards between 2016-2018. The timing of access to the contactless technology is quasi-random across clients, depending only on the expiry...

Start-up firms often face difficulties in raising external funds. Employing a unique panel dataset covering 9,715 start-up firms over the period 2007-2009, we find that high-tech startups are less likely to use bank finance and face more difficulties in raising bank finance than low-tech...

We provide evidence that long-term relationships between trading parties emerge endogenously in the absence of third party enforcement of contracts and are associated with a fundamental change in the nature of market interactions. Without third party enforcement, the vast majority of trades are...

When unemployment prevails, relations with a particular firm are valuable for workers. As a consequence, a worker may adhere to an implicit agreement to provide high effort, even when performance is not third-party enforceable. But can implicit agreements - or relational contracts - also...

We study the impact of reputational incentives in markets characterized by moral hazard problems. Social preferences have been shown to enhance contract enforcement in these markets, while at the same time generating considerable wage and price rigidity. Reputation powerfully amplifies the...

We investigate whether information sharing among banks has affected credit market performance in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, using a large sample of firm-level data. Our estimates show that information sharing is associatedwith improved availability...