Learning Millennial-Style

Abstract

The growing use of on-line educational content and related video services has changed the way people access education, share knowledge, and possibly make life decisions. In this paper, we characterize how video content affects individual decision-making and willingness to share in the context of a personal financial decision. Content geared toward giving better instructions leads to better financial decisions, but less information sharing. Misleading advertising not only causes worse decisions, but makes it less likely that videos with useful content get shared in the market. This implies that the effects of deception have externalities on other peoples' literacy and decision-making. Our work has important implications for policies guiding financial literacy training, and also has broader impact for education in the information age.

Behavioral Public Economics

“…The experimental approach oers important advantages in settings where naturalistic interventions are highly composite and heterogeneous. Programmatic diversity may help to explain why dierent authors have reached dierent conclusions concerning the behavioral eects of nancial education; see, for example, Duo and Saez (2003), Bayer et al (2009), Bayer, Bernheim andScholz (2009), Goda, Manchester and Sojourner (2012), Cole and Shastry (2012), Cole, Sampson and Zia (2011), Skimmyhorn (2012), Servon and Kaestner (2008), Collins (2010), Lührmann, Serra-Garcia andWinter (2014), Mandell (2009), Bertrand andMorse (2011), Drexler, Fischer andSchoar (2014), Carlin, Jiang and Spiller (2014), Heinberg et al (2014), Lusardi et al (2014), andBrown et al (2014), as well as the chapter on personal nancial decision making in this volume, Beshears et al (forthcoming). Recent surveys by Hastings, Madrian and Skimmyhorn (2013) and Lusardi and Mitchell (2014a) underscore the mixed nature of the available empirical evidence.…”

Evaluating Deliberative Competence: A Simple Method with an Application to Financial Choice

“…Consistent with our findings, recent work by Brown et al (2014) shows that the effects of high school financial education on behavior are most pronounced when schools offer full courses taught by trained teachers. More generally, the considerations highlighted in the current study may help to explain why different authors reach different conclusions about the effects of financial education when studying different programs; see in particular Duflo and Saez (2003), Bayer, Bernheim and Scholz (2009), Goda, Manchester and Sojourner (2014), Cole and Shastry (2010), Cole, Sampson and Zia (2011), Skimmyhorn (2012), Servon and Kaestner (2008), Collins (2013), Lührmann, Serra- Garcia and Winter (2015a), Mandell (2009), Drexler, Fischer and Schoar (2014), Carlin, Jiang and Spiller (2014), Heinberg et al (2014), Lusardi et al (2015), and Bertrand and Morse (2011).…”

“…, as well as five questions about the material covered in the video shown to the control group. 30Previous studies have also examined self-reported decision strategies (for instanceHeinberg et al, 2014; Lührmann, Serra-Garcia and Winter, 2015b;Carlin, Jiang and Spiller, 2014). In the final stage Future Reward r Investment Amount a Daily Interest Rate R Number of Doublings…”

Evaluating Deliberative Competence: A Simple Method with an Application to Financial Choice

“…For a review of structural behavioral economics, see DellaVigna (2018). 5 While there is a substantial literature on the effects of financial education, most of it focuses on measuring changes in behavior rather than on the quality of decision making; see(Duflo and Saez, 2003;Bayer et al, 2009;Mandell, 2009;Cole and Shastry, 2010;Bertrand and Morse, 2011;Cole et al, 2011;Skimmyhorn, 2012Skimmyhorn, , 2016Servon and Kaestner, 2008;Collins, 2013;Drexler et al, 2014;Carlin et al, 2014;Heinberg et al, 2014;Goda et al, 2014;Luhrmann et al, 2018;Lusardi et al, 2015;Song, 2015;Bruhn et al, 2016;Urban et al, 2018;Sutter et al, 2020). Exceptions primarily include studies, discussed below, that evaluate financial literacy or draw inferences about decision quality from directional effects on behavior.…”