IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mul/jdp901/doi10.12831-80528y2015i1p13-30.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Business Students and Financial Literacy: When Will the Gender Gap Fade away?

Author

Listed:
  • Paola Bongini
  • Paolo Trivellato
  • Mariangela Zenga

Abstract

Gender gap is a general outcome of financial literacy surveys, which also highlight that differences among men and women in the domain of financial capability are irrespective of country differences. However, when considering the young and, particularly, college students, empirical results are rather mixed. Further research is therefore needed on the factors explaining the young's financial literacy; our study contributes to the literature investigating a homogeneous sample of freshmen of the same age and cohort enrolled in a large Italian Business School, where ex ante gender differences should not be expected. We deliberately concentrate on a sample of business students, i.e., a homogeneous sample of the youth population expected to exhibit a similar personal interest in economic and financial matters. No gender gap was found either considering an overall measure of financial literacy (Rasch measure) or considering the overall difficulty of the instrument (Differential Item Functioning). We argue that personal interests in financial matters overcome potential gender issues in financial literacy.

Suggested Citation

  • Paola Bongini & Paolo Trivellato & Mariangela Zenga, 2015. "Business Students and Financial Literacy: When Will the Gender Gap Fade away?," Journal of Financial Management, Markets and Institutions, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 13-30, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:mul:jdp901:doi:10.12831/80528:y:2015:i:1:p:13-30
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.12831/80528
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.12831/80528
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Garrett, Daniel M. & Maki, Dean M., 2001. "Education and saving:: The long-term effects of high school financial curriculum mandates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 435-465, June.
    2. Diana J. Beal & Sarath B. Delpachitra, 2003. "Financial Literacy Among Australian University Students," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 22(1), pages 65-78, March.
    3. Adele Atkinson & Flore-Anne Messy, 2012. "Measuring Financial Literacy: Results of the OECD / International Network on Financial Education (INFE) Pilot Study," OECD Working Papers on Finance, Insurance and Private Pensions 15, OECD Publishing.
    4. Klapper, Leora & Lusardi, Annamaria & Panos, Georgios A., 2012. "Financial literacy and the financial crisis," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5980, The World Bank.
    5. Rajindar K. Koshal & Ashok K. Gupta & Anita Goyal & Vimal Navin Choudhary, 2008. "Assessing Economic Literacy of Indian MBA Students," American Journal of Business, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 23(2), pages 43-51.
    6. Melissa A. Z. Knoll & Carrie R. Houts, 2012. "The Financial Knowledge Scale: An Application of Item Response Theory to the Assessment of Financial Literacy," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 381-410, September.
    7. Raquel Fonseca & Kathleen J. Mullen & Gema Zamarro & Julie Zissimopoulos, 2012. "What Explains the Gender Gap in Financial Literacy? The Role of Household Decision Making," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, pages 90-106.
    8. Chen, Haiyang & Volpe, Ronald P., 1998. "An Analysis of Personal Financial Literacy Among College Students," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 107-128.
    9. Oanea Dumitru-Cristian & Dornean Adina, 2012. "Defining and Measuring Financial Literacy. New Evidence from Romanian’ Students of the Master in Finance," Scientific Annals of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 59(2), pages 113-129, December.
    10. Lynne Borden & Sun-A Lee & Joyce Serido & Dawn Collins, 2008. "Changing College Students’ Financial Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior through Seminar Participation," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 23-40, March.
    11. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Garrett, Daniel M., 2003. "The effects of financial education in the workplace: evidence from a survey of households," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(7-8), pages 1487-1519, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2014. "The Economic Importance of Financial Literacy: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(1), pages 5-44, March.
    2. Kiliyanni, Abdul Latheef & Sivaraman, Sunitha, 2016. "The perception-reality gap in financial literacy: Evidence from the most literate state in India," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 47-64.
    3. Ester Muñoz-Céspedes & Raquel Ibar-Alonso & Sara de Lorenzo Ros, 2021. "Financial Literacy and Sustainable Consumer Behavior," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-21, August.
    4. Paul Gerrans & Richard Heaney, 2019. "The impact of undergraduate personal finance education on individual financial literacy, attitudes and intentions," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 59(1), pages 177-217, March.
    5. Boglárka Zsótér, 2018. "The Aspects Of Financial Culture Among Young Adults," Ekonomske ideje i praksa, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, issue 30, pages 51-71, September.
    6. Francisco J. Oliver-Márquez & Almudena Guarnido-Rueda & Ignacio Amate-Fortes, 2021. "Measuring financial knowledge: a macroeconomic perspective," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 177-222, February.
    7. Xu, Lisa & Zia, Bilal, 2012. "Financial literacy around the world : an overview of the evidence with practical suggestions for the way forward," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6107, The World Bank.
    8. Azra Zaimovic & Anes Torlakovic & Almira Arnaut-Berilo & Tarik Zaimovic & Lejla Dedovic & Minela Nuhic Meskovic, 2023. "Mapping Financial Literacy: A Systematic Literature Review of Determinants and Recent Trends," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-30, June.
    9. Mathieu R. Despard & Terri Friedline & Stacia Martin-West, 2020. "Why Do Households Lack Emergency Savings? The Role of Financial Capability," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 542-557, September.
    10. Margaret Miller & Julia Reichelstein & Christian Salas & Bilal Zia, 2015. "Can You Help Someone Become Financially Capable? A Meta-Analysis of the Literature," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 220-246.
    11. Kadoya, Yoshihiko & Khan, Mostafa Saidur Rahim, 2020. "What determines financial literacy in Japan?," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 353-371, July.
    12. Jing Jian Xiao & Joyce Serido & Soyeon Shim, 2010. "Financial Education, Financial Knowledge and Risky Credit Behavior of College Students," NFI Working Papers 2010-WP-05, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    13. Mário Antão, 2022. "Financial Literacy as a Strategic issue: A survey from Portuguese Higher Education Students ," GATR Journals jber227, Global Academy of Training and Research (GATR) Enterprise.
    14. Omer Alkan & Erkan Oktay & Seyda Unver & Esmer Gerni, 2020. "Determination of Factors Affecting the Financial Literacy of University Students in Eastern Anatolia using Ordered Regression Models," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 10(5), pages 536-546, May.
    15. Davoli, Maddalena & Hou, Jia, 2018. "Financial literacy and socialist education: Lessons from the German reunification," SAFE Working Paper Series 217, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    16. Puneet Bhushan & Yajulu Medury, 2014. "An Empirical Analysis of Inter Linkages between Financial Attitudes, Financial Behaviour and Financial Knowledge of Salaried Individuals," Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies, Educational Research Multimedia & Publications,India, vol. 5(3), pages 58-64, September.
    17. Korkmaz, Aslihan Gizem & Yin, Zhichao & Yue, Pengpeng & Zhou, Haigang, 2021. "Does financial literacy alleviate risk attitude and risk behavior inconsistency?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 293-310.
    18. Arceo-Gómez, Eva O. & Villagómez, F. Alejandro, 2017. "Financial literacy among Mexican high school teenagers," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 1-17.
    19. Tang, Ning & Baker, Andrew, 2016. "Self-esteem, financial knowledge and financial behavior," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 164-176.
    20. Süleyman Uyar & Işıl Atalay, 2021. "Financial Literacy and The Effect of Courses on University on Financial Literacy," Muhasebe Enstitusu Dergisi - Journal of Accounting Institute, Istanbul University Business School, vol. 64(64), pages 1-17, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mul:jdp901:doi:10.12831/80528:y:2015:i:1:p:13-30. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rivisteweb.it/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.