type="main" xml:id="geer12017-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>This study evaluates whether economists support economic policies such as free trade because they deem them to be good for their home country or because they increase global welfare. In a telephone survey, 100 German economists were asked to judge...</p>

It is widely acknowledged that lay and expert perspectives on the economy widely diverge. In this context, teachers and journalists play a major role because they act as promoters for economic knowledge transfer through schools and media. This study analyzes how teachers and journalists judge...

A series of four experiments were performed to examine the accuracy of estimations of economic growth by both experts and lay people, the factors that influence the accuracy of their estimations, and which procedures they use to make estimations. The results show that for actual growth rates...

This paper examines a potential confirmation bias in price perception in consequence to a real-world event and different explanations for such a confirmation bias. In a panel design conducted 2 months before and after a raise in value-added tax (VAT), 303 participants had to estimate the...

The recent financial crisis has affected most countries. With cutbacks in business, trade and government spending, millions world-wide have lost their jobs, with young people disproportionately affected. This paper synthesizes the thoughts expressed during an interdisciplinary discussion held in...

We conjecture that lay people extrapolate past inflation, evaluate product prices relative to recalled reference prices, and perceive income increases as opportunities to increase consumption. From these conjectures we derive the hypothesis that past inflation makes products or expenditures...

Are decisions in a trust game more or less sensitive to changes in risk than decisions in a purely financial, non-social decision-making task? Participants in a binary trust game (they could either keep $5 for sure or give it to a trustee with the chance of getting $10 back) were informed that...

Recent research suggests that altruism can be surprisingly tenuous; minor situational variations can turn altruism on and off. For example, if provided with sufficient cover, “reluctant altruists” will often avoid situations that compel them to give, and they may even secretly renege on...

We review research suggesting that decisions to trust strangers may not depend on economic dynamics as much as emotional and social ones. Classic treatments of trust emphasize its instrumental or consequential nature, proposing that people trust based on expectations that their trust will be...