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on Financial Literacy and Education |
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Issue of 2026–08–17
eight papers chosen by Viviana Di Giovinazzo, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca |
| By: | Anna Chernesky; Kim P. Huynh; Marcel C. Voia |
| Abstract: | Cross-country evidence finds that there are low levels of financial literacy. Financial literacy is often measured using the “Big Three” questions about interest rates, inflation, and risk. These questions are usually part of a longer survey. Respondents in long surveys may suffer survey fatigue and have lower quality responses. Therefore, the placement of the questions (and survey fatigue) may play a role in the results. We use a randomization of question placement to estimate the causal effect on financial literacy results. We find that when financial literacy questions are placed at the end of a survey, respondents are more likely to answer “Don’t know.” The increase in “Don’t know” responses comes largely at the expense of correct responses. We find that this leads to a drop in financial literacy by 5%-15%. This research suggests a measure of financial literacy that is adapted to account for survey length. |
| Keywords: | Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods, Money and payments, Cash and bank notes, Digital assets and fintech, Payment and financial market infrastructures, Retail payments |
| JEL: | C81 C83 D12 G53 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:26-5 |
| By: | Youming Liu; Francisco Rivadeneyra; Edona Reshidi |
| Abstract: | We study competition between a welfare-maximizing public platform and a profit-maximizing private platform in a two-sided payment market. We characterize the public platform’s optimal pricing and show that it balances the benefits of increased competition against the welfare costs of network fragmentation. While introducing a public platform generally raises aggregate welfare and financial inclusion, the competing private platform may respond by raising its fees, disadvantaging merchants that continue to accept payments from the private platform. Finally, we show that cost-recovery and zero-fee mandates constrain public pricing, making welfare improvements uncertain and conditional on network effects, user switching behavior, and the degree of platform differentiation. |
| Keywords: | Money and payments, Digital assets and fintech, Payment and financial market infrastructures, Retail payments |
| JEL: | D4 E42 E58 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:26-10 |
| By: | Bernardo X. Fernández-Tellería (British Embassy in Bolivia); Leticia Victoria Castedo Michel (University of Padova, Italia) |
| Abstract: | Sustainable finance is consistently gaining relevance in financial markets across the world including Bolivia, a coun-try where more than seventy percent of the population live in urban areas. Even though municipalities should be a top destination of sustainable funding to address the country’s most urgent development challenges, they have struggled to access the local financial market mainly due to their highly heterogeneous financial strength. To address this, the paper proposes a novel financing scheme that combines the notion of horizontal fiscal equalization – a redistributive approach to transfer resources from richer to poorer jurisdictions to mitigate size and development differences – and the principles of sustainable finance to face major development challenges associated with poverty, inequality and climate change vulnerability. To illustrate this, the paper estimates and characterizes the rela-tive financial strength of Bolivia’s ten main municipalities and shows that three well-known investment vehicles amenable to the notion of horizontal fiscal equalization can be effectively used for channeling much needed sustainable funding to local governments. In effect, the proposed financing scheme could increase financial inclusion amongst Bolivian municipalities and channel much needed funding to significantly enhance the country’s efforts to achieve its climate commitments and development goals. |
| Keywords: | sustainable finance, fiscal equalization, municipal-ities, financial inclusion. |
| JEL: | Q01 G1 G18 H63 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iad:wpaper:0625 |
| By: | Motloutsi, Veronica; Viriri, Serestina; Samuels, Alexander |
| Abstract: | Digital transformation is widely presented as a pathway to financial inclusion, entrepreneurial growth, and sustainable development, yet its developmental effects remain uneven in emerging economies. This tension is particularly evident in South Africa’s fintech entrepreneurial ecosystem, where a relatively sophisticated financial sector and expanding digital innovation coexist with persistent inequality, skills shortages, fragmented institutional support, and regulatory complexity. Existing digital transformation research has largely focused on firm-level adoption, business model innovation, and technology-enabled change, offering limited explanation of how broader ecosystem conditions shape sustainable development outcomes in contexts such as South Africa. In response, this article develops a Critical Realist Digital Transformation Capacity Framework to explain how digital transformation may contribute to sustainable development within South Africa’s fintech entrepreneurial ecosystem. Drawing on digital transformation theory, capacity development theory, entrepreneurial ecosystem scholarship, and critical realism, the article argues that digital transformation is not a self-executing technological process but a contextually mediated and capacity-dependent phenomenon. It identifies institutional capacity, human capacity, and policy capacity as the key generative mechanisms through which digital technologies may support financial inclusion, ecosystem resilience, entrepreneurial participation, and broader economic development. By integrating these literatures, the article extends global information technology scholarship beyond technology-centric and firm-level accounts and offers an African-centred, mechanism-based explanation of digitally enabled development. The framework provides a conceptual foundation for future empirical research and a diagnostic lens for policymakers, regulators, and ecosystem actors in South Africa and other emerging-market settings. The study contributes to information systems theory by introducing Digital Transformation Capacity as a higher-order theoretical construct that explains how institutional, human, and policy capacities mediate the relationship between digital transformation and sustainable development. |
| Date: | 2026–07–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:87vbp_v2 |
| By: | Rachid Maghniwi (UM5 - Université mohamed 5, Rabat) |
| Abstract: | The rapid expansion of Open Banking in Morocco, accelerated by Bank Al-Maghrib regulatory frameworks and the digital transformation of financial services, creates systemic challenges for credit risk assessment across distributed banking networks. This paper proposes a federated learning (FL) architecture reinforced by differential privacy (DP) mechanisms for collaborative credit risk modelling in the Moroccan banking sector. The framework enables financial institutions to jointly train predictive models on distributed customer data without compromising individual privacy or violating data sovereignty constraints. Drawing on empirical data from a survey of 500 clients and 25 expert interviews conducted in the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra (RSK) region, we design a privacy-preserving gradient aggregation protocol adapted to the heterogeneous structures of Moroccan retail banking portfolios. Our federated model (FL-DP-AC) achieves an AUC-ROC of 0.847, representing a 14.3% improvement over centralised baselines, while maintaining a privacy budget (ε) of 1.2 under the Gaussian mechanism, meeting privacy thresholds imposed by Moroccan data protection law (Law No. 09-08). Results validate the feasibility of federated credit scoring as a secure and interoperable foundation for Open Banking ecosystems, and contribute a blueprint for AI-driven financial inclusion across the African banking sector. |
| Keywords: | Open Banking, machine learning, financial inclusion, Morocco, Bank Al-Maghrib, privacy-preserving AI, gradient aggregation, UTAUT, Moroccan banking sector, credit risk, differential privacy, federated learning, federated learning differential privacy credit risk Open Banking machine learning financial inclusion Morocco Bank Al-Maghrib privacy-preserving AI gradient aggregation UTAUT Moroccan banking sector |
| Date: | 2026–05–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05638586 |
| By: | Curi, Claudia (Free University of Bozen/Bolzano); Dibiasi, Andreas (Free University of Bozen/Bolzano); Nicolini, Francesco (Free University of Bozen/Bolzano); Ploner, Matteo (University of Trento); Tonin, Mirco (Free University of Bozen/Bolzano) |
| Abstract: | Using original survey data from working-age individuals in Northern Italy, we study longevity beliefs and other key knowledge components relevant for retirement decisions. We find substantial dispersion in population longevity beliefs, with 40% of individuals misestimating life expectancy by more than five years, and highly fragmented knowledge across domains. Providing actuarial life expectancy information -- tailored by age, gender, and county of residence -- does not affect beliefs about individuals’ own longevity or retirement plans, reflecting a disconnect between beliefs about one’s own longevity and that of others. We compare our results with forecasts provided by 262 academic experts. On average, experts accurately anticipate the levels and correlations of longevity literacy with other knowledge components, but they mispredict a strong updating response of own longevity expectations to the provision of population information that deviates markedly from what we observe in the data. |
| Keywords: | subjective longevity, expert forecasts, financial literacy, retirement |
| JEL: | D83 J26 D15 G50 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18863 |
| By: | van Asselt, Joanna; Linn, Khin Mar; Oo, Theingi |
| Abstract: | This working paper examines household welfare among women-adult-only households and households with a disabled/chronically ill member using Myanmar Household Welfare Surveys from April 2022 to July 2025. It analyzes their demographic characteristics, income composition, and levels of asset and income poverty. The paper’s main contribution is assessing key food security indicators for these vulnerable households, including Minimum Dietary Diversity, the Food Consumption Score, and the Household Hunger Score. Women-adult-only households, defined as households without any male members aged 15 or older, account for 9 percent of households nationally, or 13 percent when including households with elderly male dependents. Fourteen percent of households have a disabled or chronically ill member, and 10 percent have a disabled or chronically ill adult. Women-adult-only and disability-affected households have higher asset poverty rates than the national average. Women-adult-only households have similar income poverty levels compared with the national average, while 71 percent of households with a disabled/chronically ill member are income poor, compared to 63 percent nationally. Remittance receipt among women-adult-only households decreases income poverty for the group; more women-adult-only households receive remittances (33 percent) and rely on remittances (24 percent) as their main income source. Women-adult-only and disability-affected households perform worse across all dietary indicators. Women-adult-only households show, on average, 4 percentage points higher prevalence of low food consumption across survey rounds, while households with a disabled/chronically ill adult have a 3percentage-point higher prevalence. Moderate or severe hunger is also higher among women-adultonly households (6 percent) and households with a disabled/chronically ill adult (7 percent), compared with the national average of 4 percent. Households with a disabled/chronically ill adult are significantly more likely to rely on negative food-related coping strategies—including borrowing food, reducing meals, and skipping meals— highlighting their heightened vulnerability relative to other households. Regression results highlight that women-adult-only households face elevated hunger because of their structural economic disadvantages —fewer different income sources, weaker land ownership, and lower asset holdings — rather than the absence of adult men per se. Low food consumption, however, remains significantly lower for women-adult-only households even after fully controlling for these structural factors. This likely reflects the severe time constraints of households where all productive, care, and domestic tasks fall on adult women alone. For households with a disabled or chronically ill adult hunger persists across all specifications regardless of income, land, or asset controls — pointing to a direct burden that structural economic characteristics cannot explain. These contrasting findings suggest different interventions: structural economic interventions around land and livelihoods for women-adult-only households, and direct consumption support and social protection transfers for households affected by disability. |
| Keywords: | gender; disabilities; welfare; disability inclusion; social inclusion; financial inclusion; food security; family structure; persons with disabilities; women; Myanmar; Asia; South-eastern Asia |
| Date: | 2026–06–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprwp:183378 |
| By: | Minten, Bart; Masias, Ian; Curtis, Matt; van Asselt, Joanna; Goeb, Joseph; Aung, Zin Wai; Htar, May Thet; Linn, Khin Mar; Oo, Theingi; Synt, Nang Lun; Ei Win, Hnin; Zu, A Myint |
| Abstract: | Myanmar's agrifood system is central to the country's economy and to the livelihoods of most of its population, having historically accounted for roughly almost half of GDP and two-thirds of employment. Since 2021, the political crisis, intensifying conflict and insecurity, climate shocks, and a major earthquake have placed the system under sustained and compounding stress. Drawing on evidence collected between 2021 and 2025, this paper provides a snapshot of where the system stands following this period of crisis and identifies opportunities for strengthening its resilience going forward. Private sector actors have been central to sustaining the agrifood system's resilience since 2021. Input retailers have maintained the physical availability of fertilizer, seeds, and agro-chemicals, even in insecure areas, while mechanization service providers have continued to supply labor-saving services through flexible payment arrangements. Private agribusinesses have absorbed the contraction in formal credit, now accounting for roughly three-quarters of fertilizer credit sources, and have become the dominant providers of extension, both in-person and digital. These actors are operating under significant financial stress, but they have sustained farmers’ access to inputs, services, credit, and advice during a period when these would otherwise have likely collapsed. Input costs have risen significantly since 2022, with agricultural wages, mechanization costs, and fertilizer prices all rising substantially. Farmers have responded by partially shifting toward lower-cost production practices, including direct seeding, which carries an estimated yield penalty of approximately 15 percent compared to transplanted rice. Promoting appropriate agricultural technologies in conflict- and climate-affected areas requires targeted attention, particularly for smallholders and more remote households. Sustaining and expanding development assistance alongside humanitarian assistance will be important to support the transition toward more productive and sustainable farming systems, with scaling domestic production of organic soil amendments and expanding mechanization services. Agricultural extension use rebounded to 38 percent in the 2025 dry season, with the private sector now the dominant provider and digital channels expanding rapidly. Given persistently low and unequal access to extension services, more inclusive outreach combining targeted in-person support in underserved areas with strengthened digital delivery is needed, with particular attention to women, less educated, remote, and conflict-affected farmers. As agrochemical distributors dominate both in-person and digital advisory services, promoting high-quality agronomic content and ensuring clear separation between technical advice and product promotion is important. The rapid expansion of digital platforms creates opportunities but requires investments in digital literacy, content quality, and monitoring systems to assess impact. Partnerships between digital platforms and large firms could also support traceability and quality requirements for export markets. |
| Keywords: | agrifood systems; resilience; stress; conflicts; Myanmar; Asia; South-eastern Asia |
| Date: | 2026–06–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprwp:183199 |