Tax-qualified vehicles helped U.S. private-sector workers accumulate $25Tr in retirement assets. An often-overlooked important institutional feature shaping decumulations from these retirement plans is the "Required Minimum Distribution" (RMD) regulation, requiring retirees to withdraw a minimum...

The Housing Provident Fund (HPF), a mandatory saving scheme providing dis- counted mortgages, is a prevailing self-funded housing finance program in several emerging countries. China, in particular, established the Housing Provident Fund to promote homeownership, especially for the low income....

This paper investigates the possible opportunity cost of using standard college savings plans against the advantages of using debt to pay for college. In addition, it presents a practical argument for using debt in place of college savings plans in certain instances.By doing so, investors may...

Fintech is rapidly changing the landscape for financial services in terms of accessibility and affordability, especially in this post-COVID era. Digital finance now has the potential to be a game changer for the nearly two billion financially excluded persons in the developing and emerging...

This paper empirically studies how college savings motives affect household stock market participation. More than 65% of households saving for college allocate at least a portion of their college savings to stocks, which are also the most popular class of risky assets for college savings...

How do households adjust savings and consumption in response to liquidity from debt relief? I study this question using policy variation induced by federal student loan forbearance in the 2020 CARES Act and an individual-level panel of daily financial transactions for 315,000 borrowers....

Most financial advisors recommend storing three to six months of expenses in liquid assets in case of an emergency. Yet we estimate that more than half of U.S. families do not have at least three months of their non-discretionary expenses in liquid savings. We find that financial literacy is...

This study quantifies financial well-being and its determinants, including financial literacy, in Romania. It addresses the main factors driving the low levels of financial inclusion and the inter-dependence between financial system development and financial education. To uncover what...

Uruguay implemented an ambitious financial inclusion program that included a fiscal stimulus through VAT rebates and subsidies for point of sale (POS) adoption. One of its main provisions banned cash payment of wages and social benefits and forced financial institutions to open wage-accounts...

The paper analyzes why households in transition economies prefer to hold sizeable shares of their assets in cash at home rather than in banks. Using survey data from ten Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries, I document the relevance of this behavior and show that cash preferences...