Is Financial Literacy Dangerous? Financial Literacy, Behavioral Factors, and Financial Choices of Households

Tetsuya Kawamura, Tomoharu Mori, Taizo Motonishi and Kazuhito Ogawa

Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 2021, vol. 60, issue C

Abstract: Using original purpose-built 2018 Japanese survey data, we estimate the financial behaviors and attitudes of households. We find that financial literacy plays an important and consistent role in financial decision-making. However, the actual behaviors are counter-intuitive: people with high levels of financial literacy tend to take too many risks, overborrow, and hold naive financial attitudes. That is, financial literacy tends to cause people to become daring and reckless toward some financial aspects. By contrast, financially literate people are better at retirement planning and are indifferent to gambling. Preferences such as risk and loss aversions and discount factors, also play a role in financial choices.

Keywords: behavioral factor; consumer protection; financial education; financial literacy; household financial behavior; overconfidence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 D14 G41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889158321000101
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jjieco:v:60:y:2021:i:c:s0889158321000101

DOI: 10.1016/j.jjie.2021.101131

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Japanese and International Economies is currently edited by Takeo Hoshi

More articles in Journal of the Japanese and International Economies from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().