Modeling financial risk attitude: the role of education and financial literacy

This paper studies the relationship between risk propensity, education and financial literacy. The results of the empirical investigation confirm the importance of the key explanatory variables of education and financial competence. Since they are both included in the model, the different roles of each are singled out. In particular, while education turns out to be a factor contributing to raising risk tolerance, financial literacy tends to reduce risk propensity. Risk attitude is evaluated by self-reported assessment and modeled through cumulative logit models. In order to handle anomalous data, M estimators with a bounded influence function are considered.