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...

We study the effect of culture on financial literacy by comparing secondary-school students along the German-French language border within Switzerland. We find that students in the French-speaking area have a lower level of financial literacy than students in the German-speaking area. The...

We examine how the numeracy level of employees influences the quality of their on-the-job decisions. Based on an administrative dataset of a retail bank we relate the performance of loan officers in a standardized math test to the accuracy of their credit assessments of small business borrowers....

We examine how the numeracy level of employees influences their on-the-job performance. Based on an administrative dataset of a retail bank we relate the performance of loan officers in a standardized math test to the accuracy of their credit assessments of small business borrowers. We find that...

We examine how the numeracy level of employees influences the quality of their on-the-job decisions. Based on an administrative dataset of a retail bank we relate the performance of loan officers in a standardized math test to the accuracy of their credit assessments of small business borrowers....

This supplemental appendix extends the main paper by presenting an additional analysis of a math training implemented by the bank. We do not find evidence for a significant influence of the math training on loan officers' rejection decisions and accuracy. These findings suggest that the...

The last essay examines how the numeracy level of employees is related to the quality of their on-the-job decisions. Employers place significant weight on the numerical skills of employees and the level of numeracy is associated with labor market outcomes. Based on an administrative dataset of a...