Expertise and Prediction Accuracy

Elisabeth Grewenig, Klaus Gründler, Philipp Lergetporer, Niklas Potrafke (), Katharina Werner and Helen Zeidler

No 12522, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Public support for policy interventions depends on citizens’ beliefs about their likely ef-fects. 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 repre-sentative sample of 6,200 German households about a large-scale behavioral experi-ment on education policy (N = 3, 133). Non-experts 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)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12522

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