Year: 2008
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Empirical studies show that people tend to be overconfident about the precision of their knowledge, leading to miscalibration. Consistent with this, we found that on overage the decision makers of Swiss pension plans provide too narrow confidence intervals when asked to estimate past returns of various assets. Their confidence intervals are also very narrow in their forecasts of future returns. They are less miscalibrated, however, than our laypeople sample. Individual differences between the participants' degree of overconfidence are large and stable across those two different tasks. In a linear regression model we present evidence that the size of participants' confidence intervals is linked to individual characteristics. In our sample younger people with a degree from university and with more experience in finance provide larger intervals than older people without such an education and with less experience.
Source: Journal of Behavioral Finance
Authors: Christoph Gort, Mei Wang, Michael Siegrist
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2016245923