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Working Paper
Communicating Data Uncertainty: Multi-Wave Experimental Evidence for UK GDP
Economic statistics are commonly published without estimates of their uncertainty. We conduct two waves of a randomized controlled online experiment to assess if and how the UK public understands data uncertainty. A control group observes only the point estimate of GDP. Treatment groups are presented with alternative qualitative and quantitative communications of GDP data uncertainty. We find that most of the public understands that GDP numbers are uncertain. Quantitative communications of data uncertainty help align the public’s subjective probabilistic expectations of data uncertainty ...
Report
Trading by Professional Traders: An Experiment
We examine how professional traders behave in two financial market experiments; we contrast professional traders’ behavior to that of undergraduate students, the typical experimental subject pool. In our first experiment, both sets of participants trade an asset over multiple periods after receiving private information about its value. Second, participants play the Guessing Game. Finally, they play a novel, individual-level version of the Guessing Game and we collect data on their cognitive abilities, risk preferences, and confidence levels. We find three differences between traders and ...
Report
Strategic Sophistication and Trading Profits: An Experiment with Professional Traders
We run an experiment where professional traders, endowed with private information, trade an asset over multiple periods. After the trading game, we gather information about the professional traders’ characteristics by having them carry out a series of tasks. We study which of these characteristics predict profits in the trading game. We find that strategic sophistication, as measured in the Guessing Game (for example, through level-k theory), is the only significant determinant of professional traders’ profits. In contrast, profits are not driven by individual characteristics such as ...
Working Paper
Communicating Data Uncertainty: Multi-Wave Experimental Evidence for UK GDP
Economic statistics are commonly published without any explicit indication of their uncertainty. To assess if and how the UK public interprets and understands data uncertainty, we conduct two waves of a randomized controlled online experiment. A control group is presented with the headline point estimate of GDP, as emphasized by the statistical office. Treatment groups are then presented with alternative qualitative and quantitative communications of GDP data uncertainty. We find that most of the public understands that uncertainty is inherent in official GDP numbers. But communicating ...