 Can incentives mitigate student overconfidence at grade forecasts?Dennis Caplan, Kristian G. Mortenson and Marisa Lester Accounting Education, 2018, vol. 27, issue 1, 27-47 Abstract: Research shows that college students exhibit bias in their forecasts of exam performance. Most students are overconfident in their forecasts, academically weaker students are the most overconfident, and top-performing students are underconfident. The literature identifies negative repercussions of these biases, including inadequate preparation for exams. A recurring attribute of this literature is the absence of meaningful incentives for students to forecast accurately. We implement an extra credit scheme to incentivize accurate forecasts. Depending on how forecast bias is measured, the scheme mitigates bias by top-performing students and marginally mitigates bias by other students. Our results have several implications. First, we illustrate an extra credit tool instructors can use to incentivize students to make more thoughtful assessments of their future exam performance. Second, we show how the association between incentives and forecast bias differs across student groups. Finally, we show that results in this literature are sensitive to how bias is measured. Date: 2018 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:accted:v:27:y:2018:i:1:p:27-47 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/09639284.2017.1361850 Access Statistics for this article Accounting Education is currently edited by Richard Wilson More articles in Accounting Education from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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