The ability of consumers to make informed financial decisions improves their ability to develop sound personal finance. This paper uses a panel dataset from Russia, an economy in which consumer loans grew at an astounding rate - from about US$10 billion in 2003 to over US$170 billion in 2008 -...

A healthy financial system encourages the efficient allocation of capital and risk. The collapse of the house price bubble led to the financial crisis that started in 2007. There is a large empirical literature concerning the relation between asset price bubbles and financial crises. I evaluate...

Deteriorating financial market conditions in 2008 intensified the debate over the ability of 401(k) plans to provide retirement income. This paper simulates the effects of the market crash of 2008 for 401(k) plan participants of various ages, earnings levels, and portfolios. Because Social...

Tests using Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) unit record data from 2006/2007 to 2010/2011 indicate that Australian households on average insure against idiosyncratic income shocks. For a 10% change in income, non-durable expenditures change by 0.14%, while food...

The recent financial crisis caused a shock to private wealth. Households with low financial literacy are less likely to own risky assets directly. Therefore, fewer of them report financial losses. More importantly, financially illiterate households are more prone to sell assets that have lost in...

This report examines the social policy response of the Government of Armenia to the COVID-19 crisis. Official data on the implemented programs suggest that since March 2020, around USD 55 million has been transferred to individuals and households as wage support, unemployment and family...

This paper investigates the role, if any, played by the social media platform Reddit, in the events around the GameStop short squeeze in early 2021. In particular, we analyse the impact of discussions on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit on the price dynamics of the American online retailer...

We explore how and when crises can help firms, organizations, and societies undertake beneficial reforms. In our model, a loss averse decision maker decides whether she should undertake a new project (a reform), characterized by a sequence of cash-flows, or stick with the status quo. In normal...

This paper discusses responses to current financial and economic crisis by regulators, supervisors and policy makers in the area of private pensions. These responses are examined in the light of international guidelines, best practices and recommendations to improve the design of private pensions

Financial advisers often recommend that investors should place (100 − age) % of their wealth in a well-diversified equity portfolio. Another popular approach is based on the complete markets model with CRRA utility and i.i.d. returns which implies a constant portfolio share invested in stocks....