We conduct a randomized field experiment to study the effects of two financial education interventions offered to small-scale retailers in Uganda. The treatments contrast "active learning" with "traditional lecturing" within standardized lesson-plans. We find that active learning has a positive...

In a meta-analysis of 126 impact evaluation studies, we find that financial education significantly impacts financial behavior and, to an even larger extent, financial literacy. These results also hold for the subsample of randomized experiments (RCTs). However, intervention impacts are highly...

Die Verbesserung finanzieller Bildung ist inzwischen weltweit ein etabliertes Ziel der Wirtschaftspolitik, das über vielfältige Initiativen erreicht werden soll. Es verfügen aber nur wenige Wirkungsevaluierungen über den wissenschaftlich wünschenswerten Stand, um die Leistungen dieser...

We study the rapidly growing literature on the causal effects of financial education programs in a meta-analysis of 76 randomized experiments with a total sample size of over 160,000 individuals. The evidence shows that financial education programs have, on average, positive causal treatment...

We present a 12-item scale measuring the cognitive component of economic competence and document the psychometric properties of the scale. Using a data set with more than 12,000 secondary school students in Germany, the scale shows high discriminatory power and covers a wide range of ability...

We conduct a randomized field experiment to study the effects of two financial education interventions offered to small-scale retailers in rural western Uganda. The treatments contrast “active learning” with traditional “lecturing” within standardized lesson-plans. After six months,...

We study the impact of a recent curriculum reform introducing mandatory economic education in higher-track secondary schools in Southwest Germany. The curriculum reform provides the opportunity to leverage the exogenous variation in exposure to economic education relative to the previous cohort...

The OECD recommends its member countries implement national strategies for financial education. Many other countries, such as China and India, also have such strategies, whereas Germany does not. The strongest reason for rejecting such a strategy is the supposition that financial education...

Die OECD empfiehlt die Implementierung nationaler Strategien für finanzielle Bildung. Auch viele weitere Länder, wie China und Indien, verfügen inzwischen über entsprechende Strategien, nicht hingegen Deutschland. Der stärkste Grund für eine ablehnende Haltung ist die Hypothese mangelnder...