Consumer Knowledge and Financial Decisions Lifespan Perspectives
It’s no secret that financial literacy skills are crucial to consumers’ lives: between today’s complex picture regarding credit and mortgages and the many changes in health insurance and pension programs, failure to follow the money can be devastating. Bu
- PDF / 3,749,575 Bytes
- 341 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 103 Downloads / 248 Views
For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/8358
Douglas J. Lamdin Editor
Consumer Knowledge and Financial Decisions Lifespan Perspectives
Editor Douglas J. Lamdin Department of Economics University of Maryland Baltimore County Baltimore, MD 21250, USA [email protected]
ISSN 2191-5660 e-ISSN 2191-5679 ISBN 978-1-4614-0474-3 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-0475-0 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0475-0 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011939212 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface
Financial decisions by individuals and households are pervasive. The use of credit, purchasing a home, paying for higher education, saving for retirement, and purchasing insurance are among the prominent decisions. These decisions are affected by the knowledge possessed by the decision-makers. The financial markets, institutions, and instruments, as well as the regulations that govern them, also affect these decisions. This edited volume was undertaken with the goal of bringing together research that reflects current thinking on a wide variety of financial decisions. The book’s title, Consumer Knowledge and Financial Decisions, suggests that each chapter is concerned with some aspect of financial decisions. What do or should individuals know? How are financial decisions made? How does financial knowledge affect decisions or outcomes? How might we improve the state of financial knowledge and the quality of financial decisions with policies, programs, or financial innovations? In each chapter, one or more of these questions are addressed, either in a general sense or as it pertains to a particular demographic group, financial decision, instrument, or asset. The financial marketplace is increasingly complex. Recent turmoil in housing and stock markets, changes in the way retirement is financed, and a welter of new financial products and programs are evidence of this increasing complexity. Public policies that affect financial markets and financial decisions continue to change and evolve. This constellation of events, to a great extent, motivated this book, and attests to its timeliness. Each chapter is self-contained and thus the 20 chapters can be read in any order. However,
Data Loading...
