Misselling as a New Topic of Financial Education? A Didactic Analysis of Investment Advise after the Financial Crisis

Abstract

Personal financial investments are, as a matter of course, a topic of economic education because they are a life situation which is inherently economical. In contrast, faulty advising in banks which has become focussed upon due to the extent it has played a part in the recent financial crisis is mentioned neither in curricula nor in educational text books. Numerous private funds have been exposed as unprofitable investments. One reason for this problem is to be found in the marketing staff of the banks who did not invest their customer’s funds securely enough – and the customers did not notice it. What conclusions can be drawn from this for general financial education after the financial crisis? The economic education has failed to address the topic of “faulty advising in banks” as well. On the basis of categorical economic didactics the following contribution will analyse whether one has an exemplary case here upon which students can win generalized, transferable insights. In this context, the topic of personal financial investments will be classified in an efficient manner and the risk of opportunism in advising situations will be analysed with the help of the positive principal-agent theory. The results of this analysis of informational asymmetries within financial markets give direction to the development and revision of curricula in the didactics of economic education. With the following article a sustainable theoretical fundament will be created to underscore the obligatory inclusion of this topic in curricula as well as its realisation for target groups in school text books.