Smart Money? The Effect of Education on Financial Outcomes
利用美国各州义务教育法变化作为工具变量，发现教育能提高居民参与金融市场（如投资收入和股票持有），同时大幅降低破产、房屋止赎和贷款违约的概率，且效果主要源于储蓄投资行为改变而非收入增加。
Household financial decisions are important for household welfare, economic growth, and financial stability. Yet our understanding of the determinants of financial decision making is limited. Exploiting exogenous variation in state compulsory schooling laws in both standard and two-sample instrumental variable strategies, we show that education increases financial market participation, measured by investment income and equities ownership, while dramatically reducing the probability that an individual declares bankruptcy, experiences a foreclosure, or is delinquent on a loan. Further results and a simple calibration suggest that the result is driven by changes in savings or investment behavior, rather than simply increased labor earnings.