Financial decisions are linked to great uncertainty for many people. Long-term trends such as demographic change and digitalization have far-reaching impacts on pension plans, saving behavior, interest rates and financing conditions. Unforeseen events such as the current Covid-19 pandemic increase the pressure. How do people manage these challenges? What do they know about finance and how does that knowledge influence their savings and consumer decisions? How can financial education support the development of financial expertise?
Extensive research and answering these and other questions is the task of the newly founded Mannheim Institute for Financial Education (MIFE).
At the MIFE inaugural conference in November 2021, high-profile keynote speakers and renowned researchers discussed their perspectives on how financial education can foster financial literacy and shape financial decision-making. More than 100 experts from academia, policy, and practice joined the inaugural conference online. Highlights of the conference were the keynotes given by Annamaria Lusardi, professor of economics and accounting at the George Washington University School of Business (GWSB) in the US, David Leiser, professor of psychology at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel, and Professor Claudia Buch, vice president of the Deutsche Bundesbank.
At the MIFE founding conference, an award for early-stage researchers for financial literacy of the Deutsche Bundesbank, endowed with EUR 5,000, was awarded to Sarah Reiter of the ifo Institut und Awais Malik of the TU Dresden.