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 after observing the answers of a higher or a lower-ability adviser. Although high-quality advice has the potential to serve as a “great equalizer,” reducing the difference between higher- and lower-ability players, it did not happen in our experiment. One reason is that lower-ability players tend to pay a higher premium by sticking to their initial evaluation rather than following 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@unpublished{bouacida:halshs-04453028,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 = {Preprint, Accepted at the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization},
YEAR = {2025},
MONTH = May,
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}
}