Financial Education during COVID-19 - Assessing the effectiveness of an online programme in a high school

Acknowledging the importance of financial literacy in modern societies, schools are implementing different activities to teach basic concepts to young pupils. This work aims at investigating the effectiveness of an intervention of financial education in an Italian high school, conducted during the period of school closure due to COVID-19. Through a rigorous experimental design based on a Randomized Controlled Trial, this study analyses the effects of attending a one-month financial education course, provided through an online classroom mode. The empirical analysis combines econometric techniques for policy evaluation and machine learning algorithms. The intervention succeeded in substantially improving students' financial knowledge, suggesting a potential role of digital learning for scaling up financial education initiatives.