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This paper aims to investigate whether individuals’ planning horizon influences their decision to save privately for their retirement.

Focussing on Spain, this empirical research uses the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)[1]. Logit models are estimated considering variables related to demographic characteristics, economic situation, education and cognitive abilities and psychological and social factors.

The results confirm that the planning horizon significantly influences the decision to save for retirement. Long-term planners are more likely to save for retirement than short-term planners.

Although previous literature has identified the planning horizon as a relevant variable in the decision to save for retirement, few empirical studies have evaluated their impact. This paper shows that it is important to develop habits of financial planning in societies, especially in societies with a prominent orientation towards the present.

The purpose of this paper is to study the driving forces of both the decision to participate in individual pension plans and the amount of money allocated to such plans. Moreover, this paper evaluates the potential role that income plays, which has not previously been considered in depth in the financial literature.

Based on a sample of the Spanish population over the period 2008–2015, this paper estimates probit and tobit models, using 165,791 observations. The driving forces of private retirement savings comprise demographic, financial and socio-economic characteristics.

This paper confirms the impact of socio-demographic and economic variables on participation and monetary contributions to pension plans. It also confirms that income plays a non-negligible role. Moreover, empirical evidence reveals that the effect of gender is related to the income stratum to which the individual belongs.

Retirement planning plays a key role in retirees’ future income and several countries have emphasised the importance of private individual savings to supplement the minimum provided by public pension schemes. The previous literature has concluded that those who plan their retirement end their working lives with three times the wealth of non-planners. Consequently, analysis of whether people are saving enough for their retirement can contribute to avoiding future wealth inequalities among retirees. Spain is one of the countries with the greatest inequality in income distribution, so this issue is of even greater interest.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a behavioural approach to explain how the internet use influences stock market participation (SMP) decisions.

Drawing on the literature on sociability and SMP, this paper analyses whether virtual sociability affects SMP decision in a sample of 34,715 individuals in 14 European countries.

The results show that internet users are more likely to be stockowners. However, the obtained evidence does not support either an informational effect or a social multiplier effect of the virtual sociability. After controlling by the country’s SMP rates, a positive effect of internet usage on SMP decision remains, suggesting that contextual factors matter rather than internet usage per se. Thus, in countries where individuals are “used” to being stockholders, the habit of using internet increases SMP, but the “breeding ground” is a necessary condition.

The massive use of the internet provides a valuable opportunity to find evidence of the frictional costs which would act as inhibitors of the SMP, as economic theory hypothesised. After some promising results, the differences in the evolution of both the SMP and internet usage rates have not confirmed the initial enthusiasm. In addition, the question of why the SMP rates systematically differ across countries still remains open.

The present study examines the potential relationship between financial capability and household financial vulnerability for a sample of Spanish individuals.

The methodology combines a literature review deepening on the two concepts addressed in this paper – financial vulnerability and financial capability – and an empirical analysis. Based on a sample of 7,811 Spanish individuals taken from the Survey of Financial Competences, different probit regression models are used to test the relationship of key independent variables (namely, financial literacy, financial inclusion, and financial capability) with household financial vulnerability.

Empirical evidence points to the existence of a negative relationship between financial capability and household financial vulnerability. Besides, the variable on financial capability demonstrates, per se, a greater explanatory power than its two components (i.e. objective financial literacy and financial inclusion) separately, particularly in the case of financial literacy.

This paper contributes to the research on household finances along three main dimensions. Firstly, it enhances the research on financial capability by analysing how it relates to consumers' financial vulnerability; an association barely explored by the extant literature. Secondly, it gets closer to the multifaceted concept of financial vulnerability through a wide set of objective and subjective proxy variables. And thirdly, the empirical evidence found leads to proposing some recommendations aimed at improving households' financial capability.

This paper aims to explore the linkage between households' social interactions and credit context and how these interactions may influence household borrowing decisions.

Based on a sample of 45,907 individuals referred to 18 countries, drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, different probit regressions are used to test the four hypotheses proposed.

Empirical evidence confirms that intensive and extensive sociability are positively related to consumer debt holding. However, when social activities are considered separately, there is weak evidence that they are also related to mortgage debt holding and over-indebtedness. Moreover, at this level of analysis, the different nature of the social activities in which the individual participates in may condition the relationship with borrowing behaviour. The findings also show that relative income plays a passive role in household borrowing behaviour, since low-income households are more likely to hold mortgage and informal loans or to be over-indebted in highly indebted countries.

First, this paper extends the knowledge of the relationship between social interactions and borrowing behaviour by considering not only the intensity and diversity of the social activities in which the individual participates, but also the different nature of these activities. Second, it proposes that social interactions may play a passive role on borrowing decision, suggesting that household's behaviour might be passively affected by the density of borrowers surrounding it. To the best of our knowledge, there has not been any attempt to test this issue regarding household borrowing decisions. Third, unlike the few empirical papers on the topic, the paper also analyses previous issues by distinguishing between different types of debts; a distinction that revels the different role played by social interactions.