The ABCs of Financial Education: Experimental Evidence on Attitudes, Behavior, and Cognitive Biases

Fenella Carpena, Shawn Cole (), Jeremy Shapiro () and Bilal Zia
Additional contact information
Shawn Cole: Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts 02163
Jeremy Shapiro: Busara Center for Behavioral Economics, Nairobi, Kenya

Management Science, 2019, vol. 65, issue 1, 346-369

Abstract: This paper uses a large-scale field experiment in India to study attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive constraints that can stymie the link between financial education and financial outcomes. The study complements financial education with (i) financial incentives on a financial literacy test to affect participant motivation, (ii) financial goal setting to provide a psychological nudge, and (iii) personalized financial counseling to enhance the intensity of treatment. The analysis finds no impact of financial incentives on learning but significant effects of both goal setting and counseling on real financial outcomes. These results identify important complements to financial education that can bridge the gap between financial knowledge and behavior change.

Keywords: financial decisions; financial education; financial literacy; behavioral finance; psychology and decision making; goal setting; financial counseling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2819 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The ABCs of financial education: experimental evidence on attitudes, behavior, and cognitive biases (2015)
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:inm:ormnsc:v:65:y:2019:i:1:p:346-369

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().