'Identify the expert': an experimental study in economic advice
'Identify the expert': an experimental study in economic advice
In a novel ‘identify the expert’ task, participants receive suggested answers
by two advisors. They know one is high-accuracy and recommends answers reflecting the academic consensus (‘Expert’). The other is low accuracy and recommends the modal answer from a sample of laypeople (‘Populist’). Participants are incentivized to identify the Expert. Yet, they overwhelmingly choose the Populist, even when they could always identify the Expert without using Bayesian reasoning. Overconfidence hampers decision making, but does not fully account for the low success rate. Bayesian models fail to explain these choices. These results are relevant for a wide range of expert selection problems.
Maniadis, Zacharias
70ffa309-94c9-487c-982f-778294ea2a13
Boukouras, Aristotelis
d55eb8b6-af70-4536-bc6e-29d3b97d7932
Georganas, Sotirios
d72240f4-7850-4a44-afdf-bab303a5f099
Alysandratos, Theodoros
f182d4e1-3c0d-442a-8f72-406e532efcee
Maniadis, Zacharias
70ffa309-94c9-487c-982f-778294ea2a13
Boukouras, Aristotelis
d55eb8b6-af70-4536-bc6e-29d3b97d7932
Georganas, Sotirios
d72240f4-7850-4a44-afdf-bab303a5f099
Alysandratos, Theodoros
f182d4e1-3c0d-442a-8f72-406e532efcee
Maniadis, Zacharias, Boukouras, Aristotelis, Georganas, Sotirios and Alysandratos, Theodoros
(2025)
'Identify the expert': an experimental study in economic advice.
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.
(In Press)
Abstract
In a novel ‘identify the expert’ task, participants receive suggested answers
by two advisors. They know one is high-accuracy and recommends answers reflecting the academic consensus (‘Expert’). The other is low accuracy and recommends the modal answer from a sample of laypeople (‘Populist’). Participants are incentivized to identify the Expert. Yet, they overwhelmingly choose the Populist, even when they could always identify the Expert without using Bayesian reasoning. Overconfidence hampers decision making, but does not fully account for the low success rate. Bayesian models fail to explain these choices. These results are relevant for a wide range of expert selection problems.
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Accepted/In Press date: 18 July 2025
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 504426
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/504426
ISSN: 1945-7669
PURE UUID: 15a465ac-4e01-421c-a0fe-4f2f35ba51f3
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Date deposited: 09 Sep 2025 17:16
Last modified: 11 Sep 2025 02:38
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Contributors
Author:
Aristotelis Boukouras
Author:
Sotirios Georganas
Author:
Theodoros Alysandratos
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