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This paper presents analyses of the correlates of debt in a three-wave panel study of saving and other financial behaviour. The data used came from a representative sample of Dutch households. The results confirm the findings of previous studies on nonrepresentative samples and demonstrate that although economic variables alone predict debt quite well, psychological factors (especially present orientation, self-control and attitudes towards debt) improve our ability to predict indebtedness. The results also suggest that for most individuals being in debt is a short-term problem: chronic debtors are a small group and are distinguished by having more limited economic and social resources, being more present-oriented and finding it more difficult to control their expenditure than temporary debtors. Dynamic analyses suggest, however, that many of the differences in psychological variables between debtors and non-debtors may be a consequence of being in debt rather than a cause of it.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which personality in¯uences saving and borrowing behaviour. We do this by exploiting a Dutch data set, which provides both detailed information on households' assets and debt as well as answers to two different personality inventories (the 16PA and the FFPI). Our ®ndings are in line with previous investigations on the role of personality for saving. We found that the personality factors emotional stability, autonomy, and extraversion were robust predictors of saving and borrowing behaviour. Agreeableness, in¯exibility, and tough-mindedness could explain certain types of saving. The inclusion of the personality factors signi®cantly increased the explained variance in saving. The results suggest that when studying the effect of psychological variables on saving it is fruitful to divide saving into saving categories that differ with respect to the psychological mechanisms governing them. We also found that a partner's personality could contribute to predicting saving behaviour, which means that data should be collected from both heads of the households and their partners in multi-person households.hospitality and the use of their facilities. We would like to thank Hermann Brandsta Ètter, Karl-Erik Wa Èrneryd, and Jolijn Hendriks for assistance with providing relevant literature. We would like to thank two anonymous referees and the guest editor, Marco Perugini, for helpful comments. The ®rst author gratefully acknowledges ®nancial support from the SIS programme at Agder University College.

Two studies were carried out, using data on the assets, economic socialization and dispositions of European teenagers and young adults. The sample of young adults (18-32) was drawn from a panel survey of the Dutch population. The Dutch sample size was 392, a significant proportion (over 25%) of whom were still living in the parental home. The sample of teenagers (mean age 14.4 years) and their parents was drawn from a three-generation study of economic socialization in Norway. The Norwegian sample size was 548 adolescents, 256 mothers, and 227 fathers. The Dutch study identified four distinct strands of economic socialization: providing pocket money, doing jobs at home, doing work for others, and parental encouragement and advice. The results showed that parental encouragement (being taught budgeting and encouraged to save) had an impact on the economic orientation of young adults; those who had encouragement were better able to control spending, had a preference to save over spending, had an orientation to the future, were more conscientious and saved more. Those children who worked as adolescents were less likely to plan to save the following year and more likely to be in debt. The Norwegian study found evidence that suggests there is a difference, though not a substantial one, in the economic socialization experience of adolescents who come from poorer and less educated backgrounds: they were less likely to receive pocket money and have part-time work but were introduced to piggy banks and savings accounts at a younger age.