Economic Literacy: An International Comparison

Tullio Jappelli ()

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: Many studies show that most people are not financially literate and are unfamiliar with even the most basic economic concepts. However, the evidence on the determinants of economic literacy is scant. This paper uses international panel data on 55 countries, merging indicators of economic literacy with a large set of macroeconomic and institutional variables. Results show that there is substantial heterogeneity of financial and economic competence across countries, and that human capital indicators (PISA test scores and college attendance) are positively correlated with economic literacy. Furthermore, inhabitants of countries with more generous social security systems are generally less literate, lending support to the hypothesis that the incentives to acquire economic literacy are related to the amount of resources available for private accumulation.

Keywords: Economic Literacy; Human Capital; Social Security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 E2 G1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pke
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in The Economic Journal, 2010, 120(548), F429–F451

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csef.it/WP/wp238.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Economic Literacy: An International Comparison (2010)
Working Paper: Economic literacy: An international comparison (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:238

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr. Maria Carannante ().