Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/67236 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 6989
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We investigate the causal effect of financial literacy on financial assets, exploiting banks information policies for identification. In Italy, banks who belong to the PattiChiari consortium have implemented policies aimed at increasing transparency and procedural simplification. These policies may affect individuals' financial literacy without involving any direct cost for clients in terms of time, effort or resources, as we show in the paper. We exploit confidential information on whether individuals have their main bank account in one bank in the PattiChiari consortium to instrument their financial literacy level. We show that these policies have a positive and significant effect on both knowledge of financial instruments and household financial assets. Our results suggest that banks information policies have the potential to be an effective tool to increase individuals' financial literacy and that the relationship between financial literacy and wealth is largely underestimated by standard regression models.
Subjects: 
financial literacy
wealth
instrumental variables
JEL: 
D14
G11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.