When Expert Advice Fails to Reduce the Productivity Gap: Experimental Evidence from Chess Players
The paper previously circulated under the title Decreasing Differences in Expert Advice: Evidence from Chess Players.
The last version of the paper is available here. The data is available on Recherche Data Gouv at https://doi.org/10.57745/UL502I. The data analysis for reproducibility purposes is here.
Abstract
We study the impact of external advice on the relative performance of chess players. We asked players in chess tournaments to evaluate positions in past games and allowed them to revise their evaluation following advice from a high or a low ability player. While high-quality advice has the potential to act as a “great equalizer,” reducing the difference between high and low ability players, this is not what happens in our experiment. This is in part because our subjects ignore too much of the advice they receive. It is also because low ability players pay a higher premium than high ability ones by following their initial idea instead of high-quality advice.
Citation
Working paper:
@unpublished{bouacida:halshs-04453028,
TITLE = {{When Expert Advice Fails to Reduce the Productivity Gap: Experimental Evidence from Chess Players}},
AUTHOR = {Bouacida, Elias and Foucart, Renaud and Jalloul, Maya},
URL = {https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04453028v2},
NOTE = {working paper or preprint, currently R&R at Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization},
YEAR = {2025},
MONTH = Mar,
KEYWORDS = {expert ; advice ; chess ; control ; productivity gap ; decreasing differences},
PDF = {https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04453028v1/file/2024WP.pdf},
HAL_ID = {halshs-04453028},
HAL_VERSION = {v2},
}Data:
@misc{UL502I_2024,
author = {Bouacida, Elias and Foucart, Renaud and Jalloul, Maya},
publisher = {Recherche Data Gouv},
title = {{Decreasing Differences in Expert Evaluations: Evidence From a Field Experiment in Chess}},
UNF = {UNF:6:O7lbRs7YE1njXRSkRhvJxg==},
year = {2024},
version = {V3.1},
doi = {10.57745/UL502I},
url = {https://doi.org/10.57745/UL502I},
note = {data}
}