measuring the financial sophistication of households many households invest in ways that are hard to reconcile with standard financial theory and that have been labelled as investment mistakes campbell 2006 calvet campbell and sodini henceforth ccs 2007 there is increasing interest among household finance research ers in the concept of financial sophistication defined as the ability of a household to avoid making such mistakes a growing empirical lit erature documents a cross sectional correlation between household characteristics and invest ment mistakes richer better educated house holds tend to be better diversified marshall blume and irwin friend 1975 ccs 2007 william goetzmann and alok kumar 2008 annette vissing jorgensen 2003 display less inertia julie agnew pierluigi balduzzi and annika sunden 2003 yannis bilias dimitris georgarakos and michael haliassos 2008 campbell 2006 ccs 2009 vissing jorgensen 2002 and have a weaker disposition to hold losing and sell winning stocks ccs 2009 ravi dhar and ning zhu 2006 than other house holds one feature of these earlier papers is that mistakes are investigated one at a time often

the effect of financial education training on the financial literacy of spanish students in pisa the aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of financial education training on spanish secondary students to do this we rely on data from pisa 2012 this included an assessment of students fi

linking savings behavior confidence and individual feedback a field experiment in ethiopia abstract in this paper we investigate behavioral constraints to savings among smallholder farmers in rural ethiopia increasing savings by overcoming such behavioral constraints has been documented to have positive effects on various outcomes such as health education and agricultural investments we causally identify a strong increase in savings to a soft commitment device in the form of a moneybox with a regular savings plan in our randomized field experiment we also provide personalized feedback consisting of recommendations to self set saving goals these recommendations trigger increases in savings of up to 36 percent in a detailed analysis of the behavioral characteristics driving these results we find a strong and robust link between financial confidence and savings behavior in particular the savings of underconfident individuals are less than 2 3 of the savings of overconfident individuals an association stronger than other behavioral traits such as risk lovingness and present biasedness remarkably the effect of our personalized feedback is particularly strong for underconfident individuals we discuss possible underlying mechanisms rule out a set of alternative behavioral explanations and address crowding out behavior into other forms of saving 1

prices or knowledge what drives demand for financial services in emerging markets this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled prices or knowledge what drives demand for financial services in emerging markets conducted in 2008 in indonesia the study observed that financial development is critical for growth but its micro determinants are not well understood financial literacy training has no impact on the probability of opening a bank account although it does have an impact among those with low levels of education and financial literacy a change from 3 to 14 led to a 7 6 percent increase in the probability of owning a bank account the results hold two years after a study funding for the study derived from world bank hbs division of research and faculty development

household risk management and optimal mortgage choice the portfolio of the typical american household is quite unlike the diversie ed portfolio of liquid assets discussed in e nance textbooks the major asset in the portfolio is a house a relatively illiquid asset with an uncertain capital value the value of the house generally exceeds the net worth of the household which e nances its homeownership through a mortgage contract to create a leveraged position in residential real estate other e nancial assets and liabilities are typically far less important than the house and its associated mortgage contract the importance of housing in household wealth is illustrated in figure i this e gure plots the fraction of household assets in housing and in equities against the wealth percentile of the household poor households appear at the left of the e gure and wealthy households at the right data come from the 1989 and 1998 survey of consumer finances the e gure shows that middle class american families from roughly the fortieth to the eightieth percentile of the wealth distribution have more than half their assets in the form of housing even after the expansion of equity ownership during the 1990s equities are of negligible importance for these households 1

financial literacy and participation in the derivatives markets we set out in this study to determine whether individuals with higher levels of financial literacy are more likely to be active participants in the derivatives markets our empirical results based upon an official national survey undertaken by the financial supervisory commission of taiwan reveal that even after controlling for stock market participation rates financial literacy represents a significant benefit to individuals since it helps them to lower the entry barriers to purchasing complex derivatives products we also find that household wealth gender residential location and diverse sources of information have significant effects on participation rates in the derivatives markets furthermore when taking into consideration issues of accessibility or measurement error the positive effects of financial literacy on derivatives market participation are found to remain largely unchanged

inflation targeting and inflation expectations in mexico in this article we analyse inflation expectations in mexico after a review of the theoretical and empirical literature we apply unit root normality and cointegration tests to the data provided by banco de mexico banxico in the survey on the expectations of the private sector economics specialists our results reject the null hypothesis of normality for inflation expectations over the period 2004 01 2011 12 the exchange rate has become one of the most relevant variables in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy in a small open economy in this regard we show the existence of a long run relationship between nominal exchange rate and interest rate where inflation expectations matter for long term dynamics

financial illiteracy and mortgage refinancing decisions we analyze the effect of an exogenous shock to the italian mortgage market where a reform has abolished prepayment fees and simplified mortgage refinancing making it a virtually cost free decision for households this law along with the considerable drop in market interest rates has generated important gains for fixed rate borrowers which we quantify at up to 15 of the principal balance nevertheless only about 13 of borrowers have locked in this opportunity we study the relationship between this sluggish behavior and their level of financial literacy

using survey data to test standard propositions regarding exchange rate expectations survey data provide a measure of exchange rate expectations superior to the forward rate in that no risk premium interferes we estimate extrapolative adaptive and regressive models of expectations static or random walk expectations and bandwagon expectations are rejected current appreciation generates the expectation of future depreciation because variables other than the contemporaneous spot rate receive weight in comparing expectations to the process governing the spot rate we find statistically significant bias no variable is as ubiquitous in international financial theory and yet as elusive empirically as investors expectations regarding exchange rates in the past expectations have been modeled in an ad hoc way often by using the forward exchange rate there is however a serious problem with using the forward discount as the measure of the expected change in the exchange rate in that the two may not be equal the gap that may separate the forward discount and expected depreciation is generally interpreted as a risk premium most of the large empirical literature testing the unbiasedness of the forward exchange rate for example has found it necessary either arbitrarily to assume away the existence of the risk premium if the aim

cognitive abilities and portfolio choice we study the relation between cognitive abilities and stockholding using the recent survey of health ageing and retirement in europe share which has detailed data on wealth and portfolio composition of individuals aged 50 in 11 european countries and three indicators of cognitive abilities mathematical verbal fluency and recall skills we find that the propensity to invest in stocks is strongly associated with cognitive abilities for both direct stock market participation and indirect participation through mutual funds and retirement accounts since the decision to invest in less information intensive assets such as bonds is less strongly related to cognitive abilities we conclude that the association between cognitive abilities and stockholding is driven by information constraints rather than by features of preferences or psychological traits

assessing the performance of inflation targeting lite countries this paper deals with what is referred to in the literature as the inflation targeting lite itl countries these are a category of emerging countries whose main characteristics are that they are least developed and small economies that pursue it they use inflation targeting to define their monetary policy framework but for a number of reasons they are not in a position to put top priority to it in relation to other objectives this paper deals with a set of itl countries for which consistent data could be gathered and for which a date for setting inflation targeting could be discerned the object of the paper is to study the impact of it on actual inflation and inflation expectations we utilise intervention analysis to time series on inflation for a number of itl countries which have actually implemented it in doing so our main concern is to assess whether due to the it intervention there has been a significant change in the trend corresponding to these series and the extent to which inflation rates have actually been locked in at low levels after the implementation of it two major results emerge the first is that itl countries have been successful in locking in inflation rates the second is that non it countries have also been successful in terms of the lock in effect our overall conclusion then is that other factors in addition to it underpin the apparent success of the control of inflation

exchange rate expectations and functional misspecification the authors employ the cooley prescott adaptive model to examine for functional misspecification in three commonly used exchange rate expectation models they also test for heterogeneity among forecasts the authors find no serious misspecification problem but some heterogeneity in expectations these test results are confirmed by various other regression specification tests copyright 1994 by mit press

the financial education fallacy research to date does not demonstrate a causal chain from financial education to welfare enhancing financial behavior in part due to biases heuristics and emotional influences on decisions yet the search for effective financial education continues but it is time to ask whether giving every person effective financial education would make us better off two reasons it might not are discussed here first the time expense and invasion of privacy required would be enormous second such a world would entail a decrease in individual autonomy alternative tools could potentially increase household financial welfare and security at lower social and individual expense

the genetics of investment biases abstract for a long list of investment biases including lack of diversification excessive trading and the disposition effect we find that genetic differences explain up to 45 of the remaining variation across individual investors after controlling for observable individual characteristics the evidence is consistent with a view that investment biases are manifestations of innate and evolutionary ancient features of human behavior we find that work experience with finance reduces genetic predispositions to investment biases finally we find that even genetically identical investors who grew up in the same family environment often differ substantially in their investment behaviors due to individual specific experiences or events

a model of mortgage default in this paper we solve a dynamic model of households mortgage decisions incorporating labor income house price inflation and interest rate risk using a zero profit condition for mortgage lenders we solve for equilibrium mortgage rates given borrower characteristics and optimal decisions the model quantifies the effects of adjustable versus fixed mortgage rates loan to value ratios and mortgage affordability measures on mortgage premia and default mortgage selection by heterogeneous borrowers helps explain the higher default rates on adjustable rate mortgages during the recent u s housing downturn and the variation in mortgage premia with the level of interest rates

match bias from earnings imputation in the current population survey the case of imperfect matching this article examines match bias arising from earnings imputation wage equation parameters are estimated from mixed samples of workers reporting and not reporting earnings the latter assigned earnings of donors regressions including attributes not used as imputation match criteria e g union are severely biased match bias also arises with attributes used as match criteria but matched imperfectly imperfect matching on schooling age flattens earnings profiles within education age groups and creates jumps across groups assuming conditional missing at random a general analytic expression correcting match bias is derived and compared to alternatives reweighting a respondent only sample proves an attractive approach

planning and financial literacy how do women fare many older us households have done little or no planning for retirement and there is a substantial population that seems to undersave for retirement of particular concern is the relative position of older women who are more vulnerable to old age poverty due to their longer longevity this paper uses data from a special module we devised on planning and financial literacy in the 2004 health and retirement study it shows that women display much lower levels of financial literacy than the older population as a whole in addition women who are less financially literate are also less likely to plan for retirement and be successful planners these findings have important implications for policy and for programs aimed at fostering financial security at older ages

financial literacy and consumer credit portfolios we use survey data from a sample of uk households to analyse the relation ship between financialliteracy and consumer credit portfolios we show that individ uals who borrow on consumer credit exhibit worse financial literacy than those who do not borrowers with poor financialliteracy hold higher shares of high cost credit such as home collected credit mail order catalogue debt and payday loans than those with higher literacy we also show that individuals with poor financialliteracy are more likely to lack confidence when interpreting credit terms and to exhibit confusion over financialconcepts they are also less likely to engage in behaviour which might help them to improve their awareness of the credit market

social interaction and stock market participation we propose that stock market participation is influenced by social interaction in our model any given social investor finds the market more attractive when more of his peers participate we test this theory using data from the health and retirement study and find that social households those who interact with their neighbors or attend church are substantially more likely to invest in the market than non social households controlling for wealth race education and risk tolerance moreover consistent with a peer effects story the impact of sociability is stronger in states where stock market participation rates are higher

financial literacy and its consequences evidence from russia during the financial crisis the ability of consumers to make informed financial decisions improves their ability to develop sound personal finance this paper uses a panel data set from russia an economy in which household debt has grown at an astounding rate to examine the importance of financial literacy and its effects on behavior the paper studies both the financial and real consequences of financial illiteracy even though consumer borrowing increased very rapidly in russia only 41 of respondents demonstrate an understanding of interest compounding and only 46 can answer a simple question about inflation financial literacy is positively related to participation in financial markets and negatively related to the use of informal sources of borrowing moreover individuals with higher financial literacy are significantly less likely to report experiencing a negative income shock during 2009 and have greater availability of unspent income and higher spending capacity the relationship between financial literacy and availability of unspent income is higher in 2009 suggesting that financial literacy may better equip individuals to deal with macroeconomic shocks

mortgage risks debt literacy and financial advice a limited understanding of mortgage contracts and the risks involved may have contributed to the outbreak of the 2007 2008 financial crisis we developed a special questionnaire relating mortgage loan decisions to financial knowledge and financial advice our results demonstrate that homeowners appear to be well aware of mortgage risks large loans relative to home value are perceived as riskier as are loans with large mortgage payments relative to income and loans linked to investment vehicles homeowners with riskier mortgages indicated that they could encounter financial problems should house prices or their income decline homeowners with relatively low debt literacy are more likely to take out traditional mortgages with principal repayments over the maturity of the loan riskier mortgages are more prevalent among homeowners with a better understanding of loan contracts financially less sophisticated homeowners consulting mortgage brokers too hold riskier mortgages

the effects of financial education in the workplace evidence from a survey of households abstract we use a novel household survey to investigate the effects of employer based financial education on personal saving we explore cross sectional relations between the availability of employer based financial education and various measures of asset accumulation and we interpret these patterns in light of various potentially confounding factors our findings favor the hypothesis that employer based financial education stimulates saving both in general and for retirement

the economic importance of financial literacy theory and evidence this paper undertakes an assessment of a rapidly growing body of economic research on financial literacy we start with an overview of theoretical research which casts financial knowledge as a form of investment in human capital endogenizing financial knowledge has important implications for welfare as well as policies intended to enhance levels of financial knowledge in the larger population next we draw on recent surveys to establish how much or how little people know and identify the least financially savvy population subgroups this is followed by an examination of the impact of financial literacy on economic decision making in the united states and elsewhere while the literature is still young conclusions may be drawn about the effects and consequences of financial illiteracy and what works to remedy these gaps a final section offers thoughts on what remains to be learned if researchers are to better inform theoretical and empirical models as well as public policy jel a20 d14 g11 i20 j26

structural change in the mortgage market and the propensity to refinance we hypothesize that the intrinsic benefit required to trigger a refinancing has become smaller due to a combination of technological regulatory and structural changes that have made mortgage origination more competitive and more efficient and have raised financial awareness of homeowners to test this hypothesis we estimate an empirical hazard model of loan survival for two subperiods using a database that allows us to carefully control for homeowners credit ratings equity loan size and measurable transaction costs our findings strongly confirm that credit ratings and home equity have significant effects on the refinancing probability in addition we provide evidence that homeowners postpone refinancing in the face of increased interest rate volatility consistent with option value theory finally our results support the hypothesis that structural change in the mortgage market has increased homeowners propensity to refinance

shrouded attributes consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets bayesian consumers infer that hidden add on prices e g the cost of ink for a printer are likely to be high prices if consumers are bayesian firms will not shroud information in equilibrium however shrouding may occur in an economy with some myopic or unaware consumers such shrouding creates an inefficiency which firms may have an incentive to eliminate by educating their competitors customers however if add ons have close substitutes a curse of debiasing arises and firms will not be able to profitably debias consumers by unshrouding add ons in equilibrium two kinds of exploitation coexist optimizing firms exploit myopic consumers through marketing schemes that shroud high priced add ons in turn sophisticated consumers exploit these marketing schemes it is not possible to profitably drive away the business of sophisticates it is also not possible to profitably lure either myopes or sophisticates to nonexploitative firms we show that informational shrouding flourishes even in highly competitive markets even in markets with costless advertising and even when the shrouding generates allocational inefficiencies

baby boomer retirement security the roles of planning financial literacy and housing wealth abstract we compare wealth holdings across two cohorts of the health and retirement study the early baby boomers in 2004 and individuals in the same age group in 1992 levels and patterns of total net worth have changed relatively little over time though boomers rely more on housing equity than their predecessors most important planners in both cohorts arrive close to retirement with much higher wealth levels and display higher financial literacy than non planners instrumental variables estimates show that planning behavior can explain the differences in savings and why some people arrive close to retirement with very little or no wealth

household optimism and overborrowing we use finnish household level data from 1994 to 2013 to measure how often and what kind of forecast errors households make and how the errors are linked to the households borrowing behavior and overindebtedness we find that those households that make the largest optimistic forecast errors have greater debt to income ratios they also are more likely to report that they suffer from excessive debt loads and have problems in coping with their bills there are no such systematic effects for the households that make pessimistic forecast errors

intensifying financial inclusion through the provision of financial literacy training a gendered perspective this study examines the impact of financial literacy training on financial inclusion and its intensity using data collected from a randomised control trial an additive index of financial inclusion

are foreign exchange forecasts rational new evidence from survey data abstract tests of rationality in foreign exchange markets have been inconclusive because of disagreement over the relevant asset pricing model this paper uses a newly available set of data on foreign exchange expectations to directly test the rationality of four foreign currency markets overall the results reject the rational expectations hypothesis

the role of information and social interactions in retirement plan decisions evidence from a randomized experiment this paper analyzes a randomized experiment to shed light on the role of information and social interactions in employees decisions to enroll in a tax deferred account tda retirement plan within a large university the experiment encouraged a random sample of employees in a subset of departments to attend a benee ts information fair organized by the university by promising a monetary reward for attendance the experiment multiplied by more than e ve the attendance rate of these treated individuals relative to controls and tripled that of untreated individuals within departments where some individuals were treated tda enrollment e ve and eleven months after the fair was signie cantly higher in departments where some individuals were treated than in departments where nobody was treated however the effect on tda enrollment is almost as large for individuals in treated departments who did not receive the encouragement as for those who did we provide three interpretations differential treatment effects social network effects and motivational reward effects to account for these results

don t lapse into temptation a behavioral explanation for policy surrender abstract many policyholders surrender their life insurance policies early leading to substantial monetary losses for private households surrender can be explained rationally if it constitutes the last resort providing liquidity in the event of an urgent need of cash yet we find clear evidence in german panel data that for more than half of all surrendered contracts investors had cheaper options available to provide the required liquidity this finding demonstrates that there must be other factors influencing this important life decision we provide a behavioral explanation focusing on the role of individual decision heuristics financial literacy and financial advice in particular we show that financial literacy and financial advice can mitigate the behavioral temptation to lapse while the tendency to rely on heuristics increases lapse probability

teaching teenagers in finance does it work abstract many initiatives worldwide aim at improving financial literacy through targeted education programs yet there is little evidence regarding their effectiveness we examine the impact of a short financial education program on teenagers in german high schools our findings reveal that the training program significantly increases teenagers interest in financial matters and their financial knowledge especially their ability to properly assess the riskiness of assets behaviorally we observe a decrease in the prevalence of self reported impulse purchases but at the same time find no evidence of a significant increase in savings

foreign exchange rate expectations micro survey data this paper analyzes the panel data of biweekly surveys on the yen dollar exchange rate expectations of forty four institutions for two years and contains four major findings first market participants are heterogeneous that is significant individual effects exist in their expectation formation second the individual effects have a characteristic of wishful expectations exporters expect yen depreciation and importers expect yen appreciation relative to others third many violate the rational expectations hypothesis fourth forecasts with long horizons show less yen appreciation than those with short horizons cross equation constraints implied by the consistency of the forecast term structure are strongly rejected in the data copyright 1990 by american economic association

exchange rate expectations the role of person specific forward looking variables abstract we analyze how individual forecasters build their foreign exchange rate expectations the wall street journal poll allows us to incorporate explanatory variables such as expected inflation rates and expected gdp growth rates that are both forward looking and person specific

self control financial literacy the co holding puzzle we use uk survey data to analyze the puzzling co existence of high cost revolving consumer credit alongside low yield liquid savings in household balance sheets which we name the co holding puzzle approximately 12 of households in our sample co hold on average 3800 of revolving consumer credit on which they incur interest charges even though they could immediately pay down all this debt using their liquid assets co holders are typically more financially literate with above average income and education in most estimates co holding is also associated with impulsive spending behavior on the part of the household our results provide empirical support to theoretical models in which households co hold as a means of managing self control problems

re evaluating the effectiveness of inflation targeting abstract this paper estimates the treatment effect of inflation targeting on macroeconomic variables using a semiparametric single index method by taking into account the model misspecification of parametric propensity scores our study uses a broader set of preconditions for inflation targeting and macroeconomic outcome variables than the existing literature the results suggest no significant difference in the inflation level and inflation volatility between targeters and non targeters after the adoption of inflation targeting we find that inflation targeting reduces sacrifice ratio and interest rate volatility in the developed economies and that it enhances fiscal discipline in both the industrial and developing countries

why do so few hold stocks the authors investigate why 75 percent of u s households do not hold stocks despite the equity premium and predictions of expected utility models the question is relevant for privatization asset pricing and tax progressivity issues they show that risk aversion per se heterogeneity of beliefs habit persistence time nonseparability and quantity constraints on borrowing do not account for the phenomenon a wedge between borrowing and lending rates and minimum investment requirements are plausible but empirically weak factors more promising explanations are inertia and departures from expected utility maximization there is also qualified support for nondiversifiable income risk as a contributing factor copyright 1995 by royal economic society

failure to refinance households that fail to refinance their mortgage when interest rates decline can lose out on substantial savings based on a large random sample of outstanding u s mortgages in december of 2010 we estimate that approximately 20 of households for whom refinancing would be optimal and who appeared unconstrained to do so had not taken advantage of the lower rates we estimate the present discounted cost to the median household who fails to refinance to be approximately 11 500

exponential growth bias and household finance exponential growth bias is the pervasive tendency to linearize exponential functions when assessing them intuitively we show that exponential growth bias can explain two stylized facts in household finance the tendency to underestimate an interest rate given other loan terms and the tendency to underestimate a future value given other investment terms bias matters empirically more biased households borrow more save less favor shorter maturities and use and benefit more from financial advice conditional on a rich set of household characteristics there is little evidence that our measure of exponential growth bias merely proxies for broader financial sophistication what drives household financial decisions the canonical economic model assumes that consumers choose to consume borrow or save based on their preferences their expectations and the costs and benefits of borrowing and saving a growing body of work applies insights from psychology to enrich specifications of three of the model s key pieces preferences expectations and problem solving conditional on parameter values 1 in this paper we bring psychological evidence to bear on a fourth specification issue how consumers perceive the costs and benefits of borrowing and saving we begin by tying together existing and new evidence on these cost perceptions to show that most consumers err systematically when given information commonly available in the market on the saving side consumers display future value bias a systematic tendency to underestimate a future value given

till mortgage do us part mortgage switching costs and household s bank switching abstract we investigate the role of mortgage switching costs in shaping the households decision to change their main bank to this end we use a unique panel dataset that enables us to infer household s bank switching in conjunction with a legal reform that exogenously slashed down the mortgage switching costs the empirical evidence which survives to a variety of robustness checks supports the hypothesis that the explicit switching costs in the retail banking market are a weighty factor in shaping households bank switching despite any potential informational lock in dissecting the results we show that the effects of the reform were not uniform across households the more educated households those with a longer or broader relationship with their previous bank and those residing in ex ante less competitive banking markets were at the forefront of the wave of bank switching

match bias in wage gap estimates due to earnings imputation about 30 of workers in the current population survey have earnings imputed wage gap estimates are biased toward zero when the attribute being studied e g union status is not a criterion used to match donors to nonrespondents an expression for match bias is derived in which attenuation equals the sum of match error rates attenuation can be approximated by the proportion with imputed earnings union wage gap estimates with match bias removed are presented for 1973 2001 estimates for recent years are biased downward 5 percentage points bias in gap estimates accompanying other non match criteria public sector industry etc is examined

national culture and financial literacy international evidence we examine to what extent aspects of national culture can explain cross country variations in financial literacy our results for a sample of 92 countries show that hofstede s dimensions of pow

financial literacy externalities this paper uses unique administrative data and a quasi field experiment of exogenous allocation to apartments in sweden to estimate medium and longer run effects on financial behavior from exposure to financially literate neighbors it contributes evidence of causal impact of financial literacy and points to a social multiplier of effective programs to enhance it exposure promotes saving in private retirement accounts and stockholding especially when neighbors have economics or business education but only for educated or male headed households findings point to relevant knowledge transfer through social interactions rather than to labor market or other channels linked to local economic conditions

optimal mortgage refinancing a closed form solution we derive the first closed form optimal refinancing rule refinance when the current mortgage interest rate falls below the original rate by at least in this formula w is the principal branch of the lambert w function where is the real discount rate is the expected real rate of exogenous mortgage repayment is the standard deviation of the mortgage rate is the ratio of the tax adjusted refinancing cost and the remaining mortgage value and is the marginal tax rate this expression is derived by solving a tractable class of refinancing problems our quantitative results closely match those reported by researchers using numerical methods

investment in financial literacy and saving decisions abstract we present an intertemporal consumption model of investment in financial literacy consumers benefit from such investment because financial literacy allows them to increase the returns on wealth since literacy depreciates over time and has a cost in terms of current consumption the model delivers an optimal investment in literacy furthermore literacy and wealth are determined jointly and are positively correlated over the life cycle the model drives our empirical approach to the analysis of the effect of financial literacy on wealth and saving and indicates that the stock of financial literacy early in life is a valid instrument in the regression of wealth on financial literacy using microeconomic and aggregate data we find strong support for the model s predictions