Experimenting with financial professionals

Christoph Huber, Christian König-Kersting and Matteo M. Marini

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2025, vol. 170, issue C

Abstract: As key players in financial markets and the broader industry, financial professionals are increasingly used as experimental research participants. We review over 50 studies comparing financial professionals to laypeople and conduct meta-analyses of 22 eligible studies spanning from 1986 to 2023. Our findings reveal persistent and robust support for financial professionals being more risk-loving, but little evidence of superior forecasting accuracy. Further analyses indicate that larger monetary payments result in greater behavioral differences between financial professionals and laypeople, suggesting an increased susceptibility to incentives among professionals. This systematic review not only synthesizes experimental results, contributing to recent discussions about external validity and generalizability, but also highlights critical methodological considerations when experimenting with financial professionals.

Keywords: Experimental finance; Experimental methodology; Finance industry; Generalizability; Meta-analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B40 B41 C83 C90 C93 G41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426624002437
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:170:y:2025:i:c:s0378426624002437

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2024.107329

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur

More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().