Economic Experts versus Average Americans | Zendy

Paola Sapienza | Zendy; Luigi Zingales | Zendy

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Economic Experts versus Average Americans

Author(s) -

Paola Sapienza,

Luigi Zingales

Publication year - 2013

Publication title -

american economic review

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 16.936

H-Index - 297

eISSN - 1944-7981

pISSN - 0002-8282

DOI - 10.1257/aer.103.3.636

Subject(s) - skepticism , economics , point (geometry) , sample (material) , ideology , positive economics , population , percentage point , public economics , sociology , actuarial science , demography , political science , law , politics , mathematics , epistemology , philosophy , finance , chemistry , geometry , chromatography

We compare answers to policy questions by economic experts and a representative sample of the US population. We find a 35 percentage point difference between the two groups. This gap is only partially explained by differences in ideological or personal characteristics of the two samples. Interestingly, the difference is the largest on the questions where economists agree the most and where there is the largest amount of literature. Informing people of the expert opinions does not seem to have much of an impact. Ordinary people seem to be skeptical of the implicit assumptions embedded into the economists' answers.

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