Personal Finance

A special issue of International Journal of Financial Studies (ISSN 2227-7072).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (18 October 2019) | Viewed by 30322

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Em Lyon Business School, Ecully, France
Interests: corporate finance: mergers and acquisitions, managerial compensation; household finance: financial literacy, financial advice; financial markets microstructure and its feedbacks on real decisions

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Since the work of Campbell (2006), academic studies on household finance have developed at a growing pace, addressing several problems specific to the decision process of households who try to attain their consumption-saving objectives using the existing financial instruments.

Behavioral finance has shown that households are subject to many cognitive biases that make it hard to reconcile their decisions with standard models. The growing number and complexity of financial products has exposed households to increasingly complex portfolio decision problems. An expanding literature on financial literacy and financial education has shown that individual investors often fail to understand basic financial concepts, such as interest compounding and risk diversification, and investigated the effect of such low levels of knowledge on their financial behavior. Many households seek advice from professionals or other experts, who often have biased interests, so that the impact of such advice on the return of households’ portfolios is still debated.

In the real world, financial technology (FinTech) is revolutionizing the financial services industry and both real estate and financial securities valuations are at a historical height, making the choice of households who want to plan over long horizons particularly hard.

This Special Issue aims to collect original contributions in one of the above fields, hoping to contribute in a decisive way to the academic debate on household financial decisions.

Prof. Riccardo Calcagno
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • households portfolio diversification and risk-management
  • real estate market
  • long-term and retirement saving
  • financial literacy
  • financial education
  • financial advice
  • financial technology and households financial decision making

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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8 pages, 243 KiB  
Article
The Impact of Education on Household Income in Rural Vietnam
by Hung Van Vu
Int. J. Financial Stud. 2020, 8(1), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs8010011 - 18 Feb 2020
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 7295
Abstract
Using data from the 2018 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey, our study investigates the impact of education on household income in rural Vietnam. Both mean and quantile regression analyses were employed to analyze the impact of education. We found that education has a [...] Read more.
Using data from the 2018 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey, our study investigates the impact of education on household income in rural Vietnam. Both mean and quantile regression analyses were employed to analyze the impact of education. We found that education has a positive effect on the household income after controlling for various factors in the models. However, quantile regression analysis reveals that the effect of schooling years increases with quantiles, suggesting that education bring higher returns for richer households. We also found that households with the heads having higher qualifications or vocational education tend to earn higher income levels. Combined together, these findings imply that while education was found to increase household income, it increases income inequality in rural Vietnam. Our research findings suggest that improving the access of poor households to better education is expected to increase their income and reduce inequality in rural Vietnam. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Finance)
20 pages, 609 KiB  
Article
The Assessment of Financial Literacy: New Evidence from Europe
by Gianni Nicolini and Marlene Haupt
Int. J. Financial Stud. 2019, 7(3), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs7030054 - 19 Sep 2019
Cited by 26 | Viewed by 10938
Abstract
The hypothesis that people with more financial literacy make better financial decisions and show positive financial behaviors is crucial for more than one stakeholder. A weak connection between financial literacy and financial behaviors jeopardizes the opportunity to invest in financial education and to [...] Read more.
The hypothesis that people with more financial literacy make better financial decisions and show positive financial behaviors is crucial for more than one stakeholder. A weak connection between financial literacy and financial behaviors jeopardizes the opportunity to invest in financial education and to develop a consumer protection framework based on the chance to develop aware and responsible financial consumers. This study uses data from different countries (Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the UK), using surveys devised and fielded specifically to measure financial literacy and in order to assess if the availability of a broad set of items on financial literacy allows to develop new measures of financial literacy to better understand the relationship between financial literacy and financial behaviors. The well-established Lusardi–Mitchell questions are compared with measures that differ in terms of number of items (the “50-items” index), range of topics (the “5-specific” index), or selection process of the items (the “unbiased” index). Results support the hypothesis that the Lusardi–Mitchell questions remain a good measure in a first-step analysis, but a deeper understanding of the connection between financial literacy and financial behaviors benefits from the measures proposed in the study, that should be considered as additional assessment tools in financial literacy research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Finance)
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12 pages, 238 KiB  
Article
What Are Investors Afraid of? Finding the Big Bad Wolf
by Barbara Alemanni and Pierpaolo Uberti
Int. J. Financial Stud. 2019, 7(3), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs7030042 - 29 Jul 2019
Viewed by 3276
Abstract
The aim of financial institutions and regulators is to find an effective way to measure the risk profile of different segments of investors. Both economists and psychologists developed several methodologies to elicit and assess individual risk attitude, but these are not perfect and [...] Read more.
The aim of financial institutions and regulators is to find an effective way to measure the risk profile of different segments of investors. Both economists and psychologists developed several methodologies to elicit and assess individual risk attitude, but these are not perfect and show several drawbacks when used in practice. Thanks to a unique database of around 15,000 investors, this paper combines survey-based evidence with revealed preferences based upon observed asset allocation. This paper confirms some results known in the literature like the gender and age differences in risk-taking. Moreover, the behavioral clustering approach used for the analysis is useful in an inferential framework. The segments built starting from the questionnaire permit to “forecast” the individual risk attitude that is described by the individual choices in terms of asset allocation. Loss aversion per se is a relevant variable in explaining financial risk-taking. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Finance)
13 pages, 839 KiB  
Article
Does Death Anxiety Moderate the Adequacy of Retirement Savings? Empirical Evidence from 40-Plus Clients of Spanish Financial Advisory Firms
by Pablo Garmendia, Gabriela Topa, Teresa Herrador and Montserrat Hernández
Int. J. Financial Stud. 2019, 7(3), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs7030038 - 8 Jul 2019
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3468
Abstract
This three-wave study analyses the mediating role of financial behavior in the relationship between financial goals and retirement saving adequacy, and the moderating role of Death anxiety. The participants in the study (N = 276) were 40-plus Spanish clients of financial advisory firms. [...] Read more.
This three-wave study analyses the mediating role of financial behavior in the relationship between financial goals and retirement saving adequacy, and the moderating role of Death anxiety. The participants in the study (N = 276) were 40-plus Spanish clients of financial advisory firms. The results show that the relationship between financial goals and retirement saving adequacy is, in fact, mediated by financial behavior. We also found that death anxiety moderates the financial behavior-retirement saving adequacy relationship. The theoretical and practical implications of the study for design are discussed at the end of the paper. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Finance)
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8 pages, 397 KiB  
Brief Report
Stock Price Forecast Accuracy and Recommendation Profitability of Financial Magazines
by Victor Tiberius and Laura Lisiecki
Int. J. Financial Stud. 2019, 7(4), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs7040058 - 1 Oct 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4237
Abstract
In this study, we analyze the forecast accuracy and profitability of buy recommendations published in five major German financial magazines for private households based on fundamental analysis. The results show a high average forecast accuracy but with a very high standard deviation, which [...] Read more.
In this study, we analyze the forecast accuracy and profitability of buy recommendations published in five major German financial magazines for private households based on fundamental analysis. The results show a high average forecast accuracy but with a very high standard deviation, which indicates poor forecast accuracy with regard to individual stocks. The recommendation profitability slightly exceeds the performance of the MSCI World index. Considering the involved risk, which is represented by a high standard deviation, the excess returns appear to be insufficient. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Finance)
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