The first two essays examine the influence of cultural group membership on the accumulation of financial literacy and on intertemporal choice. The chapters exploit the Swiss language border as a natural laboratory to study the influence of culture and document substantial differences in behavior...

In this paper we analyze the relationship between unemployment and consumption. We study this relationship with panel data on households in five countries: Spain and Italy (the South), and Germany, Britain, and the US (the North). Our empirical results indicate that an increase in the duration...