The Quality of Expertise

Edward D. Van Wesep ()
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Edward D. Van Wesep: Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309

Management Science, 2016, vol. 62, issue 10, 2937-2951

Abstract: Policy makers and managers often turn to experts when in need of information, but we should expect experts to be systematically biased. This is because the decision to research a question implies a belief that research will be fruitful. If priors about the impact of one’s work are correct on average, then those who choose to research a question are optimistic about the quality of their work. The bias varies predictably with attributes of the question being studied. This fact has implications for a variety of mechanism design applications and yields predictions in accordance with a large literature in psychology. This paper was accepted by Teck-Hua Ho, behavioral economics.

Keywords: expertise; learning; prediction; overconfidence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:62:y:2016:i:10:p:2937-2951

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