Financial Literacy: Implications for Retirement Security and the Financial Marketplace

As financial markets grow ever more complex and integrated, households must make increasingly sophisticated and all-too-often irreversible economic decisions. This is particularly evident in retirement decision-making. Traditional defined benefit pension schemes are being replaced with defined contribution pensions; employer and government judgment regarding how much to save and where to invest has been replaced by employees having to make these choices on their own (sometimes assisted by advisers); and retirees have become responsible for managing their own pension assets. This volume explores how financial literacy can enhance peoples' ability to make informed economic choices. It proposes that financial literacy determines how well people make and execute saving, investing, borrowing, and planning decisions. It examines causality using controlled settings to disentangle whether financial literacy causes saving or vice versa, and demonstrates that financial education programs do indeed enhance financial decision-making and asset accumulation. Contributors to this volume - Sumit Agarwal, Senior Financial Economist, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Julie Agnew, Associate Professor of Finance and Economics and Co-Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Behavioral Finance Research, the Mason School of Business, the College of William and Mary. Steven G. Allen, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Research, the College of Management, North Carolina State University. Gene Amromin, Senior Financial Economist, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Itzhak Ben-David, Assistant Professor of Finance, the Fisher College of Business, the Ohio State University. Susan P. Carter, Ph.D. candidate, Vanderbilt University. Souphala Chomsisengphet, Senior Financial Economist in the Credit Risk Analysis Division, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Eric Chyn, Research Assistant, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Noreen Clancy, Policy Researcher, RAND Robert L. Clark, Professor of Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, and Professor of Economics, North Carolina State University. J. Michael Collins, Assistant Professor in Consumer Science, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Diana Crossan, Retirement Commissioner of New Zealand. Jeff Dominitz, Director of Statistics for the Philadelphia Eagles. Douglas D. Evanoff, Senior Financial Economist and Vice President in the Economic Research Department, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Jonathan Guryan, Associate Professor of Economics, Booth School of Business, the University of Chicago. Justine Hastings, Associate Professor, Economics Department, Yale University, and Faculty Research Fellow, NBER. Robert Holzmann, Research Director and Senior Advisor, the Labor Mobility Program, the Marseille Center for Mediterranean Integration and the Financial Literacy and Education Program, the Russia Trust Fund of the World Bank. Angela A. Hung, Senior Economist and Director, RAND Center for Financial and Economic Decisionmaking Erik Hurst, V. Duane Rath Professor of Economics and the Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow, Booth School of Business, the University of Chicago. Melissa S. Kearney, Associate Professor, the Department of Economics, the University of Maryland and Research Associate, the National Bureau of Economic Research. B. Kyu Kim, Ph.D. candidate, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Annamaria Lusardi, Joel Z. and Susan Hyatt Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College and Research Associate, the National Bureau of Economic Research. Olivia S. Mitchell, the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance and Risk Management, Department Chair of the same department, and Director of the Pension Research Council, all at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Melinda S. Morrill, Research Assistant Professor, the Department of Economics, North Carolina State University. Paige M. Skiba, Assistant Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School. Lisa Szykman, Associate Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Behavioral Finance Research, the Mason School of Business, the College of William and Mary. Jeremy Tobacman, Assistant Professor, the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania. Peter Tufano, the Sylvan C. Coleman Professor of Financial Management, Harvard Business School Stephen P. Utkus, Director, the Vanguard Center for Retirement Research. Joanne Yoong, Associate Economist, RAND. Jean A. Young, Senior Research Analyst, the Vanguard Center for Retirement Research. Gal Zauberman, Associate Professor of Marketing, the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania.