Prior studies disagree regarding the effectiveness of financial education programs, especially those offered in the workplace. To explain such measurement differences in evaluation and outcomes, we employ a stochastic life cycle model with endogenous financial knowledge accumulation to...

Trust is an essential component of the financial system, and distrust can undermine saving and economic growth. Accordingly, prior research has shown that survey responses to a question about ‘trust in people' are associated with household willingness to invest in the stock market....

Policymaker and media attention has recently focused on the rise of the so-called “gig” or freelance employment sector, where workers lack formal long-term relationships with one specific firm. This topic has captured public interest partly because of concern that those engaged in...

Target date funds in corporate retirement plans grew from $5B in 2000 to $734B in 2018, partly because federal regulation sanctioned these as default investments in automatic enrollment plans. We show that adopters delegated pension investment decisions to fund managers selected by plan...

As the world confronts unprecedented global aging, academics and policymakers are growing increasingly aware of the need for better risk management tools to handle the demographic transition. It is therefore imperative to identify innovative insurance and financial market products that can...

This paper examines two behavioral factors that diminish people's ability to value a lifetime income stream or annuity, drawing on a survey of about 4,000 adults in a U.S. nationally representative sample. By experimentally varying the degree of complexity, we provide the first causal evidence...

The online appendix to this paper can be found at: "https://ssrn.com/abstract=3332255" https://ssrn.com/abstract=3332255. Using an incentivized survey and a representative sample of investors, we elicit ambiguity attitudes toward a familiar company stock, a local stock index, a foreign stock...

We test whether probability weighting affects household portfolio choice in a representative survey. On average, people display inverse-S shaped probability weighting, overweighting low probability events. As theory predicts, probability weighting is positively associated with portfolio...

Financial literacy in Singapore has not been analyzed in much detail, despite the fact that this is one of the world's most rapidly aging nations. Using the Singapore Life Panel®, we explore older Singaporeans' levels of financial knowledge and compare them to those observed in the United...

We analyze older individuals' debt and financial vulnerability using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS). Specifically, in the HRS we examine three different cohorts (individuals age 56–61) in 1992, 2004, and 2010 to evaluate...