Several Asian countries have established savings and loan programs called housing provident funds (HPFs), which comprise a voluntary or mandatory savings account and eligibility for discounted mortgage loans. This study evaluates the impact of a mandatory HPF in China on homeownership using the...

Reliable estimates of actual household saving rates in New Zealand have proved elusive as existing sources of data have in the past given disparate estimates, making it difficult to reach a consensus of the real rate of household saving. For the first time in New Zealand, however, longitudinal...

Die vorliegende Studie zielt auf die Einschätzung der ökonomischen Stabilität der Haushalte in Deutschland ab. Ausgehend von der Betrachtung der unterschiedlichen Immobilienfinanzierungsregime wird anhand aggregierter und disaggregierter Haushaltsdaten die wirtschaftliche und finanzielle...

This paper contributes the on-going debate on income inequality in advanced economies with a proposal aimed at reducing costly investment mistakes that are prevalent among middle-class households. The paper starts by describing how households should invest, compares it with what we know about...

Savings and investments by individuals are important both for personal financial well-being and for economic growth. Many governments try to encourage their citizens to save more, or to save more appropriately, by preferring formal institutions to informal saving and by promoting more...

Demographic changes, tight public budgets, and reduced generosity of occupational pension plans shift the responsibility for an adequate retirement provision towards the individual. Applying the theoretical perspectives of Behavioural Finance and New Institutionalism to the domain of retirement...

Using a financial literacy survey of Swedish pension investors matched to actual retirement savings decisions, we argue that respondents can be broken into three groups: those who are financially literate, those who mistakenly believe they are financially literate, and those who know that they...

We measure financial literacy among LinkedIn members, complementing standard questions with additional questions that allow us to gauge self-perceptions of financial literacy. Average financial literacy is surprisingly low given the demographics of our sample: fewer than two-thirds of CFOs,...

Prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts — which allocate interest using lottery payments rather than fixed interest — attempt to encourage savings by appealing to households' gambling preferences. I introduce new data on casino cash withdrawals to measure gambling, and examine how individual...

Buying a retirement saving plan in Israel involves meeting with an agent whose interests may differ from those of his or her customers. The aim of the present study was to explore the effect of the advice given by the agent, along with that of two further factors: a fair disclosure statement...