IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ver/wpaper/01-2020.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Financial Literacy in Italy: What works among millennials most?

Author

Listed:
  • Alessia Sconti

    (Department of Economics (University of Verona))

Abstract

Nowadays, financial literacy is the most important skill required for tech-savvy millennials. We set up a financial education program called “Futuro Sicuro” on a sample of 650 high school students. This program provides two treatments at the class level, namely 1) a theoretical, rule-of-thumb based treatment with the presence of a financial advisor, and 2) a digitized treatment using an App and websites based on the learn-by-playing rule. The two treatments carry different costs but show similar effects: three weeks after their conclusion, they increase actual financial knowledge, aligning it with the self-assessed one. A follow-up study reveals the persistence of the effects three months later for the traditional course.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessia Sconti, 2020. "Financial Literacy in Italy: What works among millennials most?," Working Papers 01/2020, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ver:wpaper:01/2020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dse.univr.it/home/workingpapers/wp2020n1.pdf
    File Function: Revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alejandro Drexler & Greg Fischer & Antoinette Schoar, 2014. "Keeping It Simple: Financial Literacy and Rules of Thumb," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 1-31, April.
    2. Lührmann, Melanie & Serra-Garcia, Marta & Winter, Joachim, 2015. "Teaching teenagers in finance: Does it work?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 160-174.
    3. Bucciol, Alessandro & Veronesi, Marcella, 2014. "Teaching children to save: What is the best strategy for lifetime savings?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-17.
    4. Lusardi, Annamaria & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2007. "Baby Boomer retirement security: The roles of planning, financial literacy, and housing wealth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 205-224, January.
    5. Ian Hathaway & Sameer Khatiwada, 2008. "Do financial education programs work?," Working Papers (Old Series) 0803, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    6. Brugiavini, Agar & Cavapozzi, Danilo & Padula, Mario & Pettinicchi, Yuri, 2015. "Financial education, literacy and investment attitudes," SAFE Working Paper Series 86, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2015.
    7. Orazio Attanasio & Matthew Bird & Lina Cardona-Sosa & Pablo Lavado, 2019. "Freeing Financial Education via Tablets: Experimental Evidence from Colombia," NBER Working Papers 25929, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Angela Romagnoli & Maurizio Trifilidis, 2015. "Does Financial Education at School work? Evidence from Italy," Rivista Bancaria - Minerva Bancaria, Istituto di Cultura Bancaria Francesco Parrillo, issue 1, January -.
    9. 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.
    10. Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2018. "Financial Risk Propensity, Business Cycles and Perceived Risk Exposure," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 80(1), pages 160-183, February.
    11. Milton Friedman, 1957. "A Theory of the Consumption Function," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie57-1.
    12. Dario Sansone & Mariacristina Rossi & Elsa Fornero, 2019. "“Four Bright Coins Shining at Me”: Financial Education in Childhood, Financial Confidence in Adulthood," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 630-651, June.
    13. Leonardo Becchetti & Stefano Caiazza & Decio Coviello, 2011. "Financial education and investment attitudes in high schools: evidence from a randomized experiment," CEIS Research Paper 210, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 07 Sep 2011.
    14. Almenberg, Johan & Dreber, Anna, 2015. "Gender, stock market participation and financial literacy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 140-142.
    15. Annette Otto & Paul Webley, 2016. "Saving, Selling, Earning, and Negotiating: How Adolescents Acquire Monetary Lump Sums and Who Considers Saving," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 342-371, July.
    16. Miriam Bruhn & Luciana de Souza Leão & Arianna Legovini & Rogelio Marchetti & Bilal Zia, 2016. "The Impact of High School Financial Education: Evidence from a Large-Scale Evaluation in Brazil," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 256-295, October.
    17. Antonietta di Salvatore & Francesco Franceschi & Andrea Neri & Francesca Zanichelli, 2018. "Measuring the financial literacy of the adult population: the experience of Banca d�Italia," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 435, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    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. Sconti, Alessia, 2022. "Digital vs. in-person financial education: What works best for Generation Z?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 300-318.
    2. Alessandro Bucciol & Martina Manfre' & Marcella Veronesi, 2018. "The Role of Financial Literacy and Money Education on Wealth Decisions," Working Papers 05/2018, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    3. Tim Kaiser & Lukas Menkhoff, 2017. "Does Financial Education Impact Financial Literacy and Financial Behavior, and If So, When?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(3), pages 611-630.
    4. 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.
    5. Tim Kaiser & Annamaria Lusardi, 2024. "Financial Literacy and Financial Education: An Overview," CESifo Working Paper Series 11070, CESifo.
    6. 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.
    7. Cordero, José Manuel & Gil, María & Pedraja Chaparro, Francisco, 2016. "Exploring the effect of financial literacy courses on student achievement: a cross-country approach using PISA 2012 data," MPRA Paper 75474, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Matteo Migheli & Flavia Coda Moscarola, 2017. "Gender Differences in Financial Education: Evidence from Primary School," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 321-347, September.
    9. Entorf, Horst & Hou, Jia, 2018. "Financial education for the disadvantaged? A review," SAFE Working Paper Series 205, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    10. Bucciol, Alessandro & Quercia, Simone & Sconti, Alessia, 2021. "Promoting financial literacy among the elderly: Consequences on confidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    11. Elise Frølich Furrebøe & Ellen Katrine Nyhus & Andrew Musau, 2023. "Gender differences in recollections of economic socialization, financial self‐efficacy, and financial literacy," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 69-91, January.
    12. Marco Nieddu & Lorenzo Pandolfi, 2018. "Cutting Through the Fog: Financial Literacy and the Subjective Value of Financial Assets," CSEF Working Papers 497, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    13. Lührmann, Melanie & Serra-Garcia, Marta & Winter, Joachim, 2015. "Teaching teenagers in finance: Does it work?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 160-174.
    14. Shen, Chung-Hua & Lin, Shih-Jie & Tang, De-Piao & Hsiao, Yu-Jen, 2016. "The relationship between financial disputes and financial literacy," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 46-65.
    15. Oscar A. Stolper & Andreas Walter, 2017. "Financial literacy, financial advice, and financial behavior," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(5), pages 581-643, July.
    16. Winter, Joachim & Lührmann, Melanie & Serra Garcia, Marta, 2013. "The effects of financial literacy training: Evidence from a field experiment in German high schools," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79744, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. 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.
    18. Kjetil Bjorvatn & Alexander W. Cappelen & Linda Helgesson Sekei & Erik Ø. Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2020. "Teaching Through Television: Experimental Evidence on Entrepreneurship Education in Tanzania," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(6), pages 2308-2325, June.
    19. Alex Yue Feng Zhu, 2020. "Impact of Financial Education on Adolescent Financial Capability: Evidence from a Pilot Randomized Experiment," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 13(4), pages 1371-1386, August.
    20. Noemi Oggero & Maria Cristina Rossi & Elisa Ughetto, 2020. "Entrepreneurial spirits in women and men. The role of financial literacy and digital skills," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 313-327, August.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ver:wpaper:01/2020. 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 Reiter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isverit.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.