Abstract:

Background:
Knowledge about the economy and its functioning is fundamental to make informed decisions within the various roles that each individual plays in society, whether as consumer, seller, producer, investor, worker or even as a citizen. Economic literacy also has long-term consequences on the stability of the economy as a whole. In Portugal, in the last quarter of 2017, 76.8% of the insolvency judgments decreed by the courts concerned cases involving private individuals. In the third quarter of 2007, compared to the third quarter of 2017, the weight of insolvency of private individuals in the total number of cases almost tripled, from 21.2% to 76.8% (DGPJ, 2018).

Aims:
To evaluate undergraduate students' knowledge on economics and to analyze their ability to understand basic economic concepts.
Methods: To collect the data, it was applied a questionnaire that included socioeconomic variables and the Economic Literacy Test (ELT) developed by the National Council on Economic Education (1997). This test includes twenty questions of multiple choice about basic economic concepts and allows to evaluate the literacy of students and adults in four issues, namely consumer economics, production economics, financial economics, the government's economic role, and international trade. The ELT was applied to all students enrolled in the General Principles of Economics course, which were present in the first class, in the second half of September 2017, in the context of the Languages for International Relations degree, of a public higher education institution, located in the northern interior of Portugal. Of the 95 students enrolled 70 completed the questionnaire obtaining a response rate of 73.7%.

Results:
Students were, mainly, female (62.9%), with a mean age of 19.75 years old (SD = 2.31), 20% had already attended a course of introduction to economics during secondary education and 14.3% have already attend to the General Economics Principles without success. The level of knowledge was on average 12.46 (SD = 2.783) out of 20. The distribution of students by level of knowledge was as follows: poor (14.3%); fair (44.3%) good (40%) and very good (1.4%). The fact that the student had attended to a course of introduction to economics during secondary education (p=0.438) or in the current course (p=0.218) did not prove to be a differentiator factors of the knowledge level.

Conclusion:
Students had a fair level of knowledge. Students performed better on microeconomic issues related by consumer behaviour. They performed worse on macroeconomic issues, in matters related to the government role and inflation.
Financing: This work is supported by: the European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) [Project No. 006971 (UID/SOC/04011)]; and national funds, through the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the project UID/SOC/04011/2013.

References:
[1] DGPJ (Jan/2018). Estatísticas trimestrais sobre processos de insolvência, processos especiais de revitalização e processos especiais para acordo de pagamento (2007-2017). Boletim de informação estatística trimestral, 48, pp. 1-8.
[2] National Council on Economic Education (1997). Voluntary national contente standards in economic. New York, NCEE. Consulted: 09/2017; Available: https://www.councilforeconed.org/news-information/economic-literacy-quiz/.

Keywords:

Economic Literacy, Undergraduate students, Economic Literacy Test, General Economics Principles.