We study the complex relationship between financial literacy, retirement planning and trust in financial institutions, using data from the 2010 Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth. The impact of financial literacy on retirement planning is a well-established issue in the existing empirical literature; our main contribution is proving that financial knowledge not only impacts retirement planning, but also the decisions of entering a private pension scheme (or devoting the severance pay to a private pension scheme). Adding the consideration of trust poses serious econometric concerns, since both financial literacy and trust in financial institutions are likely to be endogenous and the presence of two endogenous regressors renders the identification of causality very difficult. Our solution is to keep only financial literacy as endogenous and include in our models an exogenous regional indicator of social capital (similar to the one adopted by Guiso et al., 2004), as a proxy for the level of trust between the counterparts of a financial contract in each geographical area. Our main findings show that trust has a positive influence on both the decisions to enter a private pension scheme or to devote the severance pay to a private pension scheme

No abstract

The role of Annual Percentage Rate (APR) in installment plan selection was investigated. The choice of analyzing APR was motivated by its wide diffusion due to the mandatory disclosure acts. There have been doubts towards consumer understanding of APR.A sample of 299 consumers were given five series of credit alternatives. The descriptions of the loans were homogeneous and regarded amount borrowed, duration, monthly installment, APR, total repayments, and opportunity cost of capital. Consumers were asked to select a credit option for each series clarifying the motivations of their choice.The ability to select the loan with the highest Net Present Value (NPV) was ascertained. It depends on the awareness of (i) opting for the lowest APR, that is also less than the opportunity cost of capital; and (ii) demanding the extension of the repayment period to improve the convenience of the identified competitive rate.The analysis attested consumer failure to single out the loan with the highest NPV. The reason should be a considerable lack of information about the usage of APR: participants selected the lowest rate but they neglected to consider the opportunity cost of capital and the extension of the repayment period. Furthermore, they sometimes chose the loan contrasting duration and monthly borrowing costs. APR usage may therefore be inapt since employed as a substitute for the monthly installment payment. An overlap between economic convenience and financial sustainability could explain this phenomenon. To improve disclosure, further (or different) borrowing cost measures should be placed in credit advertisements. This is one of the few studies that measure ability to select installments plans considering effects of information availability.JEL classification: G21, G28, D82

No abstract

No abstract