IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v5y2013i1p193-207.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cognitive Abilities and Household Financial Decision Making

Author

Listed:
  • Sumit Agarwal
  • Bhashkar Mazumder

Abstract

We analyze the effects of cognitive abilities on two examples of consumer financial decisions where suboptimal behavior is well defined. The first example features the optimal use of credit cards for convenience transactions after a balance transfer and the second involves a financial mistake on a home equity loan application. We find that consumers with higher overall test scores, and specifically those with higher math scores, are substantially less likely to make a financial mistake. These mistakes are generally not associated with nonmath test scores. (JEL D14, G21)

Suggested Citation

  • Sumit Agarwal & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2013. "Cognitive Abilities and Household Financial Decision Making," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-207, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:5:y:2013:i:1:p:193-207
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.5.1.193
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/app.5.1.193
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/data/2012-0047_data.zip
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/app/2012-0047_app.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christelis, Dimitris & Jappelli, Tullio & Padula, Mario, 2010. "Cognitive abilities and portfolio choice," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 18-38, January.
    2. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    3. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2018. "Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets," Chapters, in: Victor J. Tremblay & Elizabeth Schroeder & Carol Horton Tremblay (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, chapter 3, pages 40-74, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Shane Frederick, 2005. "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 25-42, Fall.
    5. Daniel J. Benjamin & Sebastian A. Brown & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2013. "Who Is ‘Behavioral’? Cognitive Ability And Anomalous Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(6), pages 1231-1255, December.
    6. Marianne Bertrand & Adair Morse, 2011. "Information Disclosure, Cognitive Biases, and Payday Borrowing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 1865-1893, December.
    7. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    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. Sérgio Almeida De Sousa & Marcos De Almeida Rangel, 2014. "Do As I Do, Not As I Say: Incentivization And The Relationship Between Cognitive Ability And Riskaversion," Anais do XL Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 40th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 126, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    2. Brice Corgnet & Mark DeSantis & David Porter, 2015. "What Makes a Good Trader? On the Role of Quant Skills, Behavioral Biases and Intuition on Trader Performance," Working Papers 15-17, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    3. Christelis, Dimitris & Jappelli, Tullio & Padula, Mario, 2010. "Cognitive abilities and portfolio choice," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 18-38, January.
    4. Brice Corgnet & Mark Desantis & David Porter, 2018. "What Makes a Good Trader? On the Role of Intuition and Reflection on Trader Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(3), pages 1113-1137, June.
    5. Su H. Shin & Dean R. Lillard & Jay Bhattacharya, 2019. "Understanding the Correlation between Alzheimer’s Disease Polygenic Risk, Wealth, and the Composition of Wealth Holdings," NBER Working Papers 25526, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Soo Hong Chew & Junjian Yi & Junsen Zhang & Songfa Zhong, 2016. "Education and anomalies in decision making: Experimental evidence from Chinese adult twins," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 163-200, December.
    7. Campbell, John Y. & Jackson, Howell E. & Madrian, Brigitte C. & Tufano, Peter, 2010. "The Regulation of Consumer Financial Products: An Introductory Essay with Four Case Studies," Working Paper Series rwp10-040, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    8. Ola Andersson & Håkan J. Holm & Jean-Robert Tyran & Erik Wengström, 2013. "Risk aversion relates to cognitive ability: Fact or Fiction?," Discussion Papers 13-10, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    9. Mariam Raheem & Ain ul Momina, 2021. "Do Underlying Risk Preferences explain Individuals’ Cognitive Ability? Evidence from a Sample of Pakistani Students," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 26(1), pages 85-122, Jan-June.
    10. Fehr, Dietmar & Huck, Steffen, 2013. "Who knows It is a game? On rule understanding, strategic awareness and cognitive ability," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2013-306, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    11. Burhan, Nik Ahmad Sufian & Salleh, Fauzilah & Burhan, Nik Mohd Ghazi, 2015. "National Intelligence and Private Health Expenditure: Do High IQ Societies Spend More on Health Insurance?," MPRA Paper 77328, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Almenberg, Johan & Dreber, Anna, 2015. "Gender, stock market participation and financial literacy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 140-142.
    13. Prokosheva, Sasha, 2016. "Comparing decisions under compound risk and ambiguity: The importance of cognitive skills," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 94-105.
    14. Pak, Tae-Young & Babiarz, Patryk, 2018. "Does cognitive aging affect portfolio choice?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 1-12.
    15. Jeffrey Butler & Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 2014. "The role of intuition and reasoning in driving aversion to risk and ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(4), pages 455-484, December.
    16. Cueva, Carlos & Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Iñigo & Mata-Pérez, Esther & Ponti, Giovanni & Sartarelli, Marcello & Yu, Haihan & Zhukova, Vita, 2016. "Cognitive (ir)reflection: New experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 81-93.
    17. Barham, Bradford L. & Chavas, Jean-Paul & Fitz, Dylan & Salas, Vanessa Ríos & Schechter, Laura, 2014. "The roles of risk and ambiguity in technology adoption," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 204-218.
    18. Oechssler, Jörg & Roider, Andreas & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2009. "Cognitive abilities and behavioral biases," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 147-152, October.
    19. Kaustia, Markku & Conlin, Andrew & Luotonen, Niilo, 2023. "What drives stock market participation? The role of institutional, traditional, and behavioral factors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    20. Kiss, H.J. & Rodriguez-Lara, I. & Rosa-García, A., 2016. "Think twice before running! Bank runs and cognitive abilities," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 12-19.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Cognitive Abilities and Household Financial Decision Making (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2013) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:aea:aejapp:v:5:y:2013:i:1:p:193-207. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.