The concept of “familiarity” has been used in financial economics to explain apparent paradoxes in people’s behavior, such as the home bias in portfolio choices. In this study, we investigate whether (lack of) familiarity with the language of investor communication may contribute to an...

A growing body of literature shows that nancial literacy aects household savings and investment choices. Less attention has, however, been devoted to its eect on debt behaviour. This paper contributes to lling this gap by considering how nancial literacy in uences household attitudes with...

Financial literacy has important implications for economic reforms. Reforms are meant to change people’s behavior and their effectiveness crucially depends on the ability of citizens to recognize and generally approve their necessity, their general design, and their “sense of direction.”...

Pension Systems enters into the current lively debate on European pensions. The focus of the book is the analysis of public intervention in individuals’ retirement choice, its rationale and the desirability of legislation introducing a sizeable and compulsory increase in retirement age, to...

On the premise that pension provision in Europe will dramatically change over the next few decades, this book concentrates on the funded component of pension wealth, and specifically on annuities – financial products that, on the basis of actuarial equivalence, allow the conversion of wealth...

Recent pension reforms in Italy require individuals to decide whether to participate in pension funds, how much to contribute, and how to invest their wealth, raising concerns about their ability to deal with financial matters. Using the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth...

This paper contributes to the ESF Forward Look project “Ageing, Health and Pensions in Europe” by providing an overview of policy questions and research literature on the adequacy of saving for old age in European countries. Given the current status and practices, the paper describes...