Miranda Stewart will introduce Elsa Fornero and commentators.

Financial literacy has important implications not only for personal well-being, but also for economic reforms, and thus for collective well-being. Reforms are meant to change people’s behavior. Their effectiveness crucially depends on citizens recognising and generally accepting their necessity, general design, ‘sense of direction’. Without basic understanding by citizens, reforms risk having little or no effect or even being nullified. Responsible judgment about economic reforms requires not only literacy but also information and numeracy. People’s effective participation in the reform is a prerequisite for correcting misperceptions and changing behaviour (on the part of workers, employers and institutions as well) and thus for the social sustainability (resilience) of the reform. This is particularly true of pension reforms because of their profound impact on people’s life plans. The 2011 Italian pension reform is seen as a case in point.

Elsa Fornero is a Professor of Economics at the University of Turin, Department of Business and Economics; Scientific Coordinator of CeRP – Centre for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, the first centre devoted to research on pensions in Italy, which she started in 1999.

More information on the event and registration is available here.