Is financial literacy a substitute or complement for financial advice? In this paper we analyze the decision by consumers to seek financial advice in the form of credit counseling concerning their credit and debt. Credit counseling is an important component of the consumer credit sector for...

By focusing on the highly innovative retail market for structured products, we investigate the drivers of financial complexity. We perform a lexicographic analysis of the term sheets of 55,000 retail structured products issued in Europe since 2002. We observe that financial complexity has been...

Using a unique administrative data set from a large German commercial bank, this paper aims to ascertain the role of financial advisors in individual portfolios. Following on the heels of the ongoing regulatory and political debate as to the merits of financial advice, we focus in this paper on...

This paper provides novel evidence that increased student loan debts, caused by rising tuitions, increase borrowers' demand for additional consumer debt, while simultaneously restricting their ability to access it. The net effect of student loan debt on consumer borrowing varies by market,...

Using the 2015 and 2017 waves of the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we measured financial literacy and study its relationship to households' demand for digital finance. We found that a majority of households in the People's Republic of China possess limited financial literacy. The low...

We analyze whether the frequent use of credit lines is rational or influenced by behavioral traits of households. We consider the special case of Germany where credit lines on current accounts are available to 80% of the population. We document that the excessive usage of costly credit lines is...

Since the financial crisis financial literacy has attracted growing interest among researchers and policy makers, as there is international empirical evidence that financial literacy is poor among both adults and students. In Germany we have almost no empirical evidence on financial literacy,...