Behavioural Characteristics and Financial Distress

respondents. Similarly “Literate: 4”, “Literate: 5” and “Literate: 6” respectively are equal
to one if a respondent answered four, five or six questions correctly and zero otherwise.

Table 4: Financial Literacy Among UK Sample

3.2 Descriptive Statistics

From this point onwards, I combine the UK and Irish samples and undertake all analyses
on the total sample of over 6,000 respondents, including, where necessary, a dummy vari-
able indicating which survey respondents come from. I do this for two reasons. Firstly,
combining the datasets from both countries results in a larger sample that allows for a more
detailed examination of financial distress. Secondly, the descriptive statistics in both the
British and Irish samples reveal little difference between the two countries in terms of who
experiences financial distress.

As a robustness check I repeat all the empirical exercises contained in this paper sep-
arately for the UK and Ireland and find no quantitative differences in the results for both
countries.³ Furthermore, I believe I am justified in combining both datasets since the UK
and Ireland share many features such as a common language, similar cultural and insti-
tutional backgrounds and the Anglo-Saxon banking culture, while there has also always
been a high degree of labour mobility between Ireland and the UK. In addition, while
both surveys were undertaken at different points in time, the macroeconomic conditions
prevailing in both countries in the lead-up to the surveys were broadly similar. Specifically,

³ One example of such an exercise is available in Table 7 where separate results are available based on
the Irish dataset alone and on the British data alone. The remaining results are available on request from
the author.

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