Gender gaps in financial literacy are pervasive and persistent. They are partly explained because women choose "I do not know" more frequently. We test for the effectiveness of three interventions to shift this behavior. The control survey includes the possibility of "I do not know". The three...

Defaults have been shown to have a powerful effect on retirement saving behavior yet there is limited research on who is most affected by defaults and whether this varies based on features of the choice environment. Using administrative data on employer-sponsored retirement accounts linked to...

In a nationally-representative sample, we predict retirement savings using survey-based elicitations of exponential-growth bias (EGB) and present bias (PB). We find that EGB, the tendency to neglect compounding, and PB, the tendency to value the present over the future, are highly significant...

We conducted a randomized controlled trial where 3,000 9th grade students coming from 78 high schools received a financial education course at different points of the year. Right after the treatment, test performance increased by 16% of one standard deviation, treated youths were more likely to...

We study biased survival expectations across two domains and examine whether such biased expectations influence health and financial behaviors. Combining individual-level longitudinal data, retrospective, and end of life data from several European countries for more than a decade, we estimate...

Using data from 74 countries, we uncover important differences in the association between financial literacy and preferences by the level of economic development. We find that patience is only salient in wealthier countries, i.e. countries with their GDP per capita above the sample median. In...

Using micro-data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique, this paper contributes to knowledge on gender-gaps in financial literacy (FL) via a study of teenagers, emerging adults and young adults. The analysis...

Using a US nationally representative sample of over 6,000 adults from 26 countries of ancestry, we find a strong association between their financial literacy in the US and the financial literacy level in their self-reported country of ancestry. More specifically, if an individual from a country...

We present the results of a randomized intervention to study how teaching financial literacy to 16-year old high-school students affects their behavior in risk and time preference tasks. Compared to two different control treatments, we find that teaching financial literacy makes subjects behave...

We present the results of a randomized intervention in schools to study how teaching financial literacy affects risk and time preferences of adolescents. Following more than 600 adolescents, aged 16 years on average, over about half a year, we provide causal evidence that teaching financial...