Intra-household self-confidence in subjective financial knowledge

What is it about?

This article examines the subjective financial knowledge of 7,170 heterosexual couples of retail bank clients in France. Based on responses to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) questionnaire, we compute the self-assessed financial knowledge of both spouses. We hypothesize that individuals who live as part of a couple and make financial decisions together are less likely to overestimate their own financial knowledge. Our findings show that individuals tend to self-assess lower levels of financial knowledge in the presence of their spouse. Furthermore, the gender gap in subjective financial knowledge also appears to narrow with spouses together at the bank being 18.7% more likely to report no gap. Nevertheless, we observe a positive association between individual savings and stock market participation and the size of the gender gap in subjective financial knowledge in couples.

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