As global funds flow at unprecedented rates, consumers in developing countries have increased access to financial markets and find themselves handling more complex financial tools. In such a setting, consumers may be overexposed to financial risks. In this respect, increasing financial literacy levels of consumers has become essential, and assessing the financial literacy of the population is a key ingredient of any policy to do so. Using an international survey, we study financial literacy in Mexico, Lebanon, Uruguay, Colombia and Turkey. After establishing financial literacy levels, we identify the least financially literate groups in each country to facilitate targeting of public policy. We find that females, younger adults and individuals who cannot read or write in the official language of their country of residence have lower financial literacy scores. In line with the previous findings in the literature on the developed countries, our results indicate that financial literacy increases with education. In Mexico and Turkey, there are large regional differences that must be addressed.

This paper studies the effects of policies aimed at mitigating discrimination against women in the marketplace on the gender wage gap, decisions to invest in skills, the composition of employment and unemployment, and long-run growth. The analysis uses a gender-based overlapping generations model with labor market rigidities. Gender bias in the workplace varies inversely with the presence of skilled women (as agents of change) in the labor market and has a direct impact on their bargaining power in the family. The model is calibrated for Morocco. Experiments show that although the benefits of policies aimed at mitigating gender bias in the workplace can promote growth and be significantly magnified through a stronger presence of skilled women in the labor market, a trade-off may emerge with respect to female unemployment when anti-discrimination policies are combined with policies aimed at subsidizing women's training. To internalize this trade-off, anti-discrimination policies in the marketplace may need to be complemented by measures aimed at reducing labor costs and raising productivity.