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Are financially illiterate individuals all the same? This study aims to answer this question. Specifically, the authors investigate whether people answering incorrectly and “do not know” to the big five questions about financial knowledge (FK), all identified by previous literature as financially illiterate, are two sides of the same coin, or rather individuals with different socio-economic and demographic characteristics, and whether this leads to different levels of risk of falling victim to financial fraud.

Using a large and representative sample of Italian adults, the authors run both ordered probit and probit regressions to test the determinants of financially illiterate individuals, distinguishing between those answering FK questions incorrectly and those answering “do not know”. The authors also measure the probability of falling victim to financial fraud for the two groups. To check the robustness of our results, the authors run a multinomial regression, a structural equation model and an instrumental variable regression model.

The authors demonstrate that the socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics of individuals selecting incorrect responses to FK questions are different from those of individuals selecting the “do not know” option. Moreover, the results show that the former are more likely to be victims of financial frauds.

The “one-size-fits-all” approach is not suitable for financial education. It is important to consider socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics of individuals in order to identify specific targets of education programmes aiming to reduce insecurity and excessive self-confidence as well as to increase objective FK. The study’s findings also identify vulnerable groups to which financial fraud prevention schemes should be targeted.

To date, financial illiteracy has been measured as the sum of incorrect and “do not know” responses given to FK questions. This approach does not allow to observe the socio-demographic and socio-economic differences between people choosing the “do not know” option and those answering incorrectly. The paper aims to overcome this limit by investigating the socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics of individuals selecting “do not know” and incorrect responses, respectively. The authors also investigate whether the two groups have different probabilities of being victims of financial fraud.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main predictors of university students’ intention to invest in a pension fund: an understanding of how young people perceive retirement planning is relevant for its policy implications.

The authors apply the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) proposed by Ajzen (1985) which explains how human behaviour is guided, and provides a framework to explore the underlying beliefs that affect one’s behaviours.

The evidence on a sample of Italian university students highlights that the TPB predictors, pension knowledge, money management and the highest level of financial literacy, positively influence their intention to invest in a pension fund.

Although the authors are aware of the limitations of the analysis (limited to a specific country and to a specific financial product), the authors believe that the study has the merit of offering a number of ideas for further research. In fact, there are few contributions in the literature that identify the intention of young people to save for retirement. The study sheds light on this important issue. However, because it is limited to Italian university students, its findings cannot be generalised.

The study can be used by regulators, financial educators, counsellors and public institutions to increase the propensity of young people to plan for their future and guide them towards attitudes and behaviours most likely to increase their savings for retirement.

The evidence suggests that regulators, institutions and educators should improve the information that is provided to families first and to the younger generations – at school, for instance – about the functioning of the pension system. The survey’s findings emphasise that university students are generally unaware of the many reforms to the system while believing that their state pensions will be sufficient to maintain a retirement standard of living that is the same as the standard of living achieved during their working lives.

In the authors’ knowledge, there are not studies that focus on the youngs’ intention to invest in a pension fund. The authors believe that millennials are the most hitted by the Fornero’s reform and understand which predictors affect this intention can allow to drive the decision in investing in these important financial tools.

This study aims to analyze bank lending behavior before and during the most recent financial crisis. Banks are more willing to grant loans during economic expansion. However, this behavior can result in reduced portfolio asset quality. The analysis tries to facilitate understanding of whether this relationship is always true. A second aim of the study is to highlight whether the impact of credit risk on bank lending behavior during a financial crisis is greater for banks that grew faster during the pre-crisis period than for other banks.

The analysis is based on a sample of banks in Italy, an example of a country undergoing a credit crunch without a lending bubble burst. The methodology is based on a panel regression and author uses different models to test his hypothesis: an ordinary least squares, a fixed effect, a least absolute regression and a Generalized Method of Momentum (GMM). This allows to mitigate some of the endogeneity problems.

The essay shows that effectively, most of the banks that grew faster during a pre-crisis period show a higher growth of non-performing loans and a greater reduction in lending activity during a financial crisis. However, 34 per cent of banks that grew faster during a pre-crisis period have a low growth of non-performing loans in the subsequent years. Finally, the results suggest that credit risk negatively affects bank lending behavior, but a higher impact relative to fast banks with respect to other banks cannot be emphasized.

Findings have some policy implications. First, given the adverse effect of the increase of non-performing loans (NPLs) on the bank’s lending activity and on the broad economy in general, there is merit to strengthen supervision to prevent a further increase and accumulation of NPLs in the bank’s credit portfolio. In addition, the supervisors could require that banks take always high credit standard when extend credit, both during positive economic cycle and during period of contraction. The using of higher credit standard could be helpful in the reduction of the pro-cyclicality of bank’s lending behavior and credit risk. Furthermore, the fact that high level of NPLs continues to impact on the bank’s lending activity and that this activity is very important for the economic recovery underlines that banks should clean-up their credit portfolios as soon as possible.

This paper contributes to the literature in various ways. The study analyzes the cyclical effect of credit growth, i.e. banks increase their bank lending behavior during good times, which leads to an increase in bad loans and a high credit risk in their portfolio. These cyclical effects are not knowingly studied together, but the literature usually analyzes the single steps of the cycle. Second, studying listed and unlisted banks allows to have a more representative sample and to analyze better the real bank lending activity considering both commercial than cooperative banks.