Financial Market Knowledge of the Young Generation: An Empirical Analysis of European Students

Abstract: In the recent survey of 262 European students, we try to assess the level of financial market knowledge of the young generation around the age of 23 years. We can identify the following highlights in the first out of three parts: 54.3% out of 256 people, who answered the question, purchased at least once shares, bonds, mutual funds or made comparable investments in the past and the experience made by 179 out of 262 (68.3%) people was perceived to be very positive. Similarly, the attitude of 230 out of 262 (87.8%) European students to­wards buying shares, bonds, mutual funds, or making comparable investments is very positive. However, the attitude of 247 and 249 people out of 262 attendees, respectively, towards the general economic situation driven by inflation and the observable increase in prices of everyday goods are rated rather low. In the main part of our survey, we analyze the level of competence of our European students to deal with calculus-related exercises (e.g. impact of the time value of money, in­terest or/and inflation, functioning of financial markets and instruments). We ob­serve the following tendencies: 86.3% of people correctly stated that investments in shares offer the highest risk, which shows that European students understand the basic finance relationship between higher risk potentially leading to high re­turns or high losses. 82.8% of participants correctly stated that the possibility of losing money decreases with a higher degree of diversification. The third set of questions focuses on the knowledge related to investment possibilities and po­tential preferences for investments. For example, 45.4% of people signalized their willingness to invest their money into real estate investment funds, 43.9% chose shares, 28.2% mentioned ETFs, 20.2% would decide on bonds and 11.8% for cryp­tocurrencies. European students seem to be financially knowledgeable on an av­erage level and the majority can choose instruments that fit their preferences.

9th International Scientific ERAZ Conference – ERAZ 2023 – Conference Proceedings: KNOWLEDGE BASED SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, hybrid – online, virtually and in person, Prague, Czech Republic, June 1, 2023

ERAZ Conference Proceedings published by: Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans – Belgrade, Serbia

ERAZ conference partners: Faculty of Logistics, University of Maribor, Maribor (Slovenia); University of National and World Economy – UNWE, Sofia (Bulgaria); Center for Political Research and Documentation (KEPET), Research Laboratory of the Department of Political Science of University of Crete (Greece); Institute of Public Finance – Zagreb (Croatia); Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Ohrid, University of St. Kliment Ohridski from Bitola (North Macedonia)

ERAZ Conference 2023 Conference Proceedings: ISBN 978-86-80194-72-1, ISSN 2683-5568, DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/ERAZ.2023

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission. 

Suggested citation

Gałkiewicz, D. P., Situm, M., & Hartleif, L. (2023). Financial Market Knowledge of the Young Generation: An Empirical Analysis of European Students. In V. Bevanda (Ed.), ERAZ Conference – Knowlegde Based Sustainable Development: Vol 9. Conference Proceedings (pp. 267-273). Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans. https://doi.org/10.31410/ERAZ.2023.267

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