Expertise and Prediction Accuracy

Elisabeth Grewenig, Klaus Gründler, Philipp Lergetporer, Niklas Potrafke, Katharina Werner and Helen Zeidler ()
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Elisabeth Grewenig: KfW, Frankfurt
Klaus Gründler: University of Kassel, ifo Institute, CESifo
Philipp Lergetporer: ifo Institute, CESifo, Technical University of Munich (TUM)
Katharina Werner: ifo Institute, CESifo, Business School Pforzheim
Helen Zeidler: Technical University of Munich (TUM)

Munich Papers in Political Economy from Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich

Abstract: Public support for policy interventions depends on citizens’ beliefs about their likely effects. We examine how individuals form such beliefs by studying their predictions of experimental outcomes in a policy-relevant setting, and why their predictions differ from expert benchmarks. We elicit forecasts from 127 professional economists and a representative sample of 6,200 German households about a large-scale behavioral experiment on education policy (N = 3; 133). Nonexperts predict both average outcomes and treatment effects far less accurately than experts. Prediction accuracy improves with calibrated priors, self-reported effort, and the use of structured reasoning, but remains well below expert levels. We show that scalable design features, including the provision of well-calibrated numerical anchors and monetary incentives to rise effort, improve non-expert predictions, with effects comparable in magnitude to tertiary education or structured reasoning. Our findings have important implications for bridging the ‘expertise gap’ in public discourse.

Keywords: expert forecasts; lay predictions; belief formation; expertise gap; policy support; behavioral experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 D83 H52 I22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2026-02
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https://www.mgt.tum.de/fileadmin/mgt.tum.de/facult ... e/47_Non_experts.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Expertise and Prediction Accuracy (2026)
Working Paper: Expertise and Prediction Accuracy (2026)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aiw:wpaper:47

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