Legen Menschen ihre Ersparnisse in Finanzprodukte an, etwa um für ihr Alter vorzusorgen, machen sie davon in nicht unerheblichem Ausmaß ihre künftige finanzielle Lebenslage abhängig. Die Finanzbranche bewirbt zahlreiche und hinsichtlich ihres Verlustrisikos stark variierende...

This paper studies to what extent the experiences of households shape their willingness to take financial risks. It follows the methodology of Malmendier and Nagel (2011) and applies it to a novel data set on household finances covering euro area households. We show that experienced stock market...

Multiplicative growth processes that are subject to random shocks often have a skewed distribution of outcomes. In a number of incentivized laboratory experiments we show that a large majority of participants either strongly underestimate skewness or ignore it completely. Participants...

This paper studies to what extent the experiences of households shape their willingness to take financial risks. It follows the methodology of Malmendier and Nagel (2011) and applies it to a novel data set on household finances covering euro area households. We show that experienced stock market...

Worldwide, people are gaining access to a formal bank account, which allows account-based instead of cash payments. Based on a novel randomized control trial, we document that the payment method is an important determinant of savings behavior. In rural India, we study the effect on savings of...

Multiplicative growth processes that are subject to random shocks often have an asymmetric distribution of outcomes. In a series of incentivized laboratory experiments we show that a large majority of participants either strongly underestimate the asymmetry or ignore it completely. Participants...

We provide an explanation of the low willingness to save that is observed in many poor countries. Our explanation is based on the hypothesis that people have an over-optimistic outlook. As discussed in the psychological literature, an illusionary positive view of the future may be a good thing....

We examine the effect of personal, two-way communication on the behavior of borrowers, who have fallen behind on their consumer loan payments. While the lender has informed all borrowers about the delinquency through an automatically generated letter, some borrowers also receive a phone call...

This paper assesses the role of financial inclusion in moderating the incidence of entrepreneurship on energy poverty in Ghana. The assessment is made by using pooled data and two stage least squares. The exposition builds from the 7th (GLSS7) and 6th (GLSS6) rounds focusing on the Ghana Living...

This paper uses proprietary data comprising of 4,155 participants who attended financial education seminars conducted by a major U.S. consumer credit counseling agency in 2007. In this study, knowledge gained from attending the seminars is estimated using a multivariate regression model. Results...