Invitations to a Financial Literacy Training Program

Last registered on November 12, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Invitations to a Financial Literacy Training Program
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0017157
Initial registration date
November 09, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
November 10, 2025, 10:08 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
November 12, 2025, 5:57 AM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Mikael Paaso
Affiliation
Erasmus University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Daniel Meztger
PI Affiliation
Erasmus University Rotterdam
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PI Name
Andre Betzer
PI Affiliation
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
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PI Name
Samed Krueger
PI Affiliation
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
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PI Name
Anja Schultz
PI Affiliation
University of Applied Sciences for Finance & Management
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-11-10
End date
2026-06-01
Keywords
Finance & Microfinance
Additional Keywords
financial literacy, training, stock market participation
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Recent work has used surveys and interviews to attempt to understand the importance of various constraints to stock market participation (Choi and Robertson, 2021 JF, Chopra and Haaland, 2024 and Duraj et al. 2025). While these papers have uncovered some new barriers to participation and provided much needed structure to the literature on constraints to participation, the survey and interview-based approaches have some natural limits. For example, they might not be able to accurately measure the impact of deep underlying attitudes towards the stock market that constrain participation.

In this project, we conduct a revealed-preferences test of constraints to stock market participation. We do this in the context of sending out invitations to a financial literacy training programme (focused specifically on training people about investing) that we plan to run in cooperation with a German bank. We randomize the content of the invitations to make one reason for non-participation more salient - for instance, one invitation might specifically address the concern that the respondent considers the stock market too risky while another would address the concern that the respondent considers the stock market too difficult. We then track which of our invitations lead to the most enrolments in our training program.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Betzer, Andre et al. 2025. "Invitations to a Financial Literacy Training Program." AEA RCT Registry. November 12. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.17157-1.1
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We invite participants to complete a survey expressing their interest in and their preferences for a course related to investing, mainly targeted at those who do not currently invest.

We randomize the content of the invitation to test various theories of non-participation:
- Overestimation of risks / high risk aversion
- Underestimating the benefits of investing (two elements: retirement adequacy and exponential growth bias)
- Overestimation of time / effort spent on investing
- Difficulty of getting started
- Identity (shareholders as seen as greedy or gamblers)
- Perception of not having enough money to invest
Intervention Start Date
2025-11-10
Intervention End Date
2026-01-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
- Completion of survey
- Sign up for financial training course
- (IF POSSIBLE) Enrolment in course / completion of course
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Gender differences in primary outcomes
Differences in primary outcomes for immigrants vs. natives
Differences in primary outcomes by socioeconomic status
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
We will test whether the invitations differentially affect takeup among different groups, with a focus on whether groups that have lower stock market participation rates in Germany (women, immigrants, the poor) are differentially affected by the treatments.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We will randomize clients of a German bank to receive a different invitation to participate in a financial literacy training program focused on investing. The "treatments" each focus on a different aspect of non-participation.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Done in Excel by the bank (note: this pre-registration has been edited on 12/11 to reflect the fact that the bank told us that they are not able to send only one invitation per household as we initially planned but will instead invite all their clients)
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Each individual person is a "cluster", we will send invitations to 80-100k clients of a German bank (we are currently unsure of the exact number that the bank will be able to send)
Sample size: planned number of observations
80,000 - 100,000 people
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
6 treatment arms = about 14,000-17,000 people per invitation arm
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan