The Alpha of a Survey of the Literature in Economic and Financial Literacy

There is a century long history of economic and financial education laced with implications for both political civic education. It has been argued by some economists that since economics is based on rational self-interested “agents” we don’t need to teach economics at the undergraduate level all. This paper offers a brief review of the literature from the K- college results of economic and financial education extending the survey to the more recent attempts at public financial and economic education. In the review we try to highlight both the results and types of approaches. We then identify some of the areas in which the relatively new areas of behavioral and experimental economics are relevant to economic and financial literacy efforts. We speculate on how these findings may effect economic and financial literacy efforts in the future. JEL Classification: A20, A21, A22, A29