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With a large-scale online experiment with 1593 participants from the U.S. and the U.K. we explore whether and how people working in the finance industry and laypeople from the general population are influenced by information on other people's forecasts when making forecasts on the future development of two indices and two stocks. We find that (i) laypeople's forecasts are strongly influenced by information they get on other subjects' forecasts, while financial professionals are much less influenced by information signals; (ii) signals by financial professionals influence all subject groups more than forecasts by laypeople; (iii) we observe a home bias in all subject groups, which can be mitigated by information signals; (iv) all subject groups expect lower forecast errors for financial professionals than for laypeople, hence we find evidence for trust in experts.

With a large-scale online experiment with 1593 participants from the U.S. andthe U.K. we explore whether and how people working in the finance industry andlaypeople from the general population are influenced by information on other people’sforecasts when making forecasts on the future development of two indices andtwo stocks. We find that (i) laypeople’s forecasts are strongly influenced by informationthey get on other subjects’ forecasts, while financial professionals are much lessinfluenced by information signals; (ii) signals by financial professionals influence allsubject groups more than forecasts by laypeople; (iii) we observe a home bias in allsubject groups, which can be mitigated by information signals; (iv) all subject groupsexpect lower forecast errors for financial professionals than for laypeople, hence wefind evidence for trust in experts.

We study decisions on welcoming or opposing welfare migration in a laboratory setting with two societies in which one subject can migrate from the poorer to the richer society, provided a majority in the richer society votes to allow that. In each society, subjects indicate their preference for a percentage contribution to a public pool. The median of these rates sets the contributions paid by everybody; a feature that results in high contribution rates with an average of 90%. Varying the multiplier with which contributions are magnified before redistribution to society members, and thus the expected gain/loss associated with migration, we find that subjects overwhelmingly welcome migrants if they expect an economic benefit, while most participants oppose migration if they would be negatively affected by it. Regarding participants’ attitudes, we find that more altruistic people are more in favor of migration than more selfish people and that center right–wing oriented subjects propose lower contribution levels than center left–wing oriented subjects. We conclude that economic motives are a crucial factor for accepting or rejecting welfare migration. Therefore, a key to promoting acceptance of new migrants is to ensure and then communicate that their net effect on growth, society, and the public purse is positive.

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