MEASURING FINANCIAL LITERACY: A CASE STUDY OF SELF-ASSESSMENT AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN HUNGARY

Abstract

This paper analyses the educational self-assessment of Hungarian undergraduate business economics students, focusing primarily on the concept of financial literacy as students predict and evaluate their own performance in written examinations relative to their externally assessed achievement. The main purpose of this study is to explore whether high-achieving students are more accurate in their self-assessment when predicting and evaluating their financial knowledge. In the pre- and post-examination predictions the higher achieving students actually seem to predict and evaluate their examination results more accurately than their lower-achieving fellows. Although we found no substantial differences in self-estimation by gender, females seemed to less likely to overestimate their financial knowledge after taking exams. Our conclusion also allows policy makers to identify potential needs in relation to specific features of financial literacy and provides evidence about which groups of people are in need of supplementary support, not only in higher education but in other contexts as well.

Keywords

• self-assessment; overestimation; human capital; higher education; financial literacy