Arna Olafsson receives grant to study fintech and financial fitness

Assistant professor at the Department of Finance Arna Olafsson has received a DKK 1.16 mill. grant from The Danish Council for Independent Research to investigate the project entitled Fintech and Financial Fitness.

In the project, Arna will investigate how access to financial information affects individual decision-making and welfare. The modern financial realm has enabled individuals to request and receive information regarding their finances on-demand. However, empirical evidence as to how better technology and access to information affects peoples' outcomes and on the determinants and effects of getting informed remains scarce. This project aims to fill this gap by using data from a financial aggregation app that allows bank customers to manage all their bank accounts and credit cards across multiple banks in one place. The digitization of budgeting processes and the attendance tracking of online behavior allow direct measurement of technology adoption and individual attention in ways that previously were not possible and to link this with individuals’ financial fitness.

The project will be joint work with Bruce Carlin at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and Michaela Pagel at Columbia University.

For more information, please contact Arna Olafsson here.