Numeracy, financial literacy, and financial decision-making

Financial decisions, be they related to asset building or debt management, require the capacity to do calculations, including some complex ones. But how numerate are individuals, in particular when it comes to calculations related to financial decisions? Studies and surveys implemented in both the United States and in other countries that are described in this paper show the level of numeracy among the population to be very low. Moreover, lack of numeracy is not only widespread but is particularly severe among some demographic groups, such as women, the elderly, and those with low educational attainment. This has potential consequences for individuals and for society as a whole because numeracy is found to be linked to many financial decisions. Now more than ever, numeracy and financial literacy are lifetime skills necessary to succeed in today’s complex economic environment.

Financial literacy : an essential tool for informed consumer choice?

Increasingly, individuals are in charge of their own financial security and are confronted with ever more complex financial instruments. However, there is evidence that many individuals are not well-equipped to make sound saving decisions. This paper demonstrates widespread financial illiteracy among the U.S. population, particularly among specific demographic groups. Those with low education, women, African-Americans, and Hispanics display particularly low levels of literacy. Financial literacy impacts financial decision-making. Failure to plan for retirement, lack of participation in the stock market, and poor borrowing behavior can all be linked to ignorance of basic financial concepts. While financial education programs can result in improved saving behavior and financial decision-making, much can be done to improve these programs’ effectiveness

Which heuristics can aid financial-decision-making?

© 2015 Elsevier Inc. We evaluate the contribution of Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman, often in association with his late co-author Amos Tversky, to the development of our understanding of financial decision-making and the evolution of behavioural finance as a school of thought within Finance. Whilst a general evaluation of the work of Kahneman would be a massive task, we constrain ourselves to a more narrow discussion of his vision of financial-decision making compared to a possible alternative advanced by Gerd Gigerenzer along with numerous co-authors. Both Kahneman and Gigerenzer agree on the centrality of heuristics in decision making. However, for Kahneman heuristics often appear as a fall back when the standard von-Neumann-Morgenstern axioms of rational decision-making do not describe investors' choices. In contrast, for Gigerenzer heuristics are simply a more effective way of evaluating choices in the rich and changing decision making environment investors must face. Gigerenzer challenges Kahneman to move beyond substantiating the presence of heuristics towards a more tangible, testable, description of their use and disposal within the ever changing decision-making environment financial agents inhabit. Here we see the emphasis placed by Gigerenzer on how context and cognition interact to form new schemata for fast and frugal reasoning as offering a productive vein of new research. We illustrate how the interaction between cognition and context already characterises much empirical research and it appears the fast and frugal reasoning perspective of Gigerenzer can provide a framework to enhance our understanding of how financial decisions are made

The influence of boards of directors’ characteristics on strategic decision-making: Evidence from Greek companies

This article is available open access from the publisher’s website at the link below.This study explores the influence Boards of Directors’ demographic characteristics on the process of making strategic decisions. Empirical testing is based on a sample of 105 Greek companies listed on the Athens Stock Exchange. The results suggest that educational level affect both the financial reporting and the hierarchical decentralisation in the strategic decision-making process. Also, functional background of executives was found to be related with financial reporting. However, the educational specialty did not appear to have any significant influence on the strategic decision-making process. In light of these findings, implications for practitioners are made and avenues for future research are suggested

Exponential Growth Bias and Financial Literacy

The tendency to underestimate the future value of a variable growing at a constant rate, an example of exponential growth bias, has been linked to household financial decision making. We show that exponential growth bias and standard measures of financial literacy are negatively correlated in a representative sample of Swedish adults. Since financial literacy is linked to household decision making, our results indicate that examining the relationship between exponential growth bias and household finance without adequate controls for financial literacy may generate biased results.exponential growth bias, financial literacy, household finance

Competition, non-financial measures and the effectiveness of management control system

This paper reports the results of an empirical study examining the relationship between the emphasis on non-financial measures and two other variables; the intensity of competition and the effectiveness of a management control system, in a manufacturing company. Two important issues focused in the study are: does competition compel managers to utilize more non-financial measures in decision making and is the emphasis given to non-financial measures worthwhile? Data from 105 manufacturing companies throughout Malaysia were analyzed using correlation and regression analysis. The results of both analyses indicate that the emphasis given to non-financial measures in decision making has a positive correlation with the effectiveness of a management control system and secondly, the intensity of competition faced by an organization is positively correlated with the emphasis on non-financial indicators. Descriptive analysis was also performed to evaluate the distribution of emphasis on non-financial measures by the age, location, ownership, size of an organization and its industry

Investment analysis of plum brandy production – methodology approach

The major prerequisite of successful entrepreneurship venture is quality of decision-making process. Decision in investment is the most important financial decision. It is a part of both long-term business planning process and strategic business definition. Using available investment appraisal methods, entrepreneur should make positive or negative investment decision. Within the development of the economic theory and the practice many of methods made decision-making process rational and gave the scientific and practical base for successful project evaluation.Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Security and Poverty, Productivity Analysis,

THE RELEVANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY THEORIES TO FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

Starting from the interest that we have found in psychology sciences in order to understand better the way managers, analysts and last but not least investors behave in the decision making process our study focuses on the link between financial reporting, disclosure policies and investors judgment under uncertainty. The theoretical background describes the rational judgment of investors found in economic utility theories but also looks upon the main cognitive and social psychology for irrational behavior in the decision making process. Our research mainly focuses on measuring the influence of five psychological factors on the irrational behavior of potential investor. We showed that overconfidence occurs when investors overestimate the precision of their private signals and their knowledge about the value of a financial transaction and always remember the successfully times and easily forget the failures. Also, we have pointed out that limited attention is frequently associated with changing in disclosure policies and selfcontrol is negatively related to irrational behavior of investor.psychology theories, financial reporting, disclosure, investor, judgment, decision making process, psychology variables