In view of cross-national student mobility and increasing internationalization of the labor market, a common understanding of economic concepts as well as awareness for country-specific factors influencing economics education is essential. Therefore, the development of instruments that allow for comparable investigation across countries is crucial. The present study describes economic education in Japan and Germany and explores the specific conditions for access to higher education in each country. On this basis, we examine the level of economic literacy (using TEL-IV) at the beginning of higher education among 232 German and 198 Japanese students of Business & Economics and the impact of personal influencing factors thereon. Overall, comparable entry levels can be observed, whereby each student group shows different response patterns. Predicting economic literacy, primarily gender and interest reach significance. A final outlook regarding the significance of cross-national studies is given, taking limitations and implications of this study into account.

鉴于学生的跨国流动和劳动力市场的日益国际化，对经济概念的共同理解以及对影响经济教育的国家特定因素的认识至关重要。因此，开发能够在各国进行可比调查的工具至关重要。本研究描述了日本和德国的经济教育，并探讨了每个国家接受高等教育的具体条件。在此基础上，我们考察了 232 名德国学生和 198 名日本学生在高等教育开始时的经济素养水平（使用 TEL-IV）以及个人影响因素对其的影响。总体而言，可以观察到相当的入学水平，每个学生组都表现出不同的反应模式。预测经济素养，主要是性别和兴趣具有重要意义。考虑到本研究的局限性和影响，给出了关于跨国研究重要性的最终展望。