Essays on financial decision making

This thesis seeks to understand and find solutions to some of the vexing issues relating to financial literacy, financial decisions and behaviour. A major part of the thesis explores how a short, focused, just-in-time financial literacy intervention can improve immediate financial decisions, and how decisions of our peers impact our own choices under various circumstances. These issues were investigated using laboratory experiments under varying socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of Australia and Sri Lanka. Finally, the thesis addresses a well-known 'wicked problem' relating to inadequate retirement saving and offers a novel behavioural insight into improving long-term saving behaviour