Financial forecasting in the lab and the field: Qualified professionals vs. smart students

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance

Volume 46, June 2025, 101051

Abstract

We compare the performance of financial professionals (CFAs) with university students in four financial forecasting tasks ranging from simple lab prediction tasks to longitudinal field prediction tasks. Although students and professionals performed similarly in the most artificial forecasting tasks, CFAs outperformed students in the field predictions. Differences in forecasting performance between finance professionals and students were explained by financial literacy, not cognitive ability.

Te Bao ^a, Brice Corgnet ^b, Nobuyuki Hanaki ^c, Katsuhiko Okada ^d, Yohanes E. Riyanto ^e, Jiahua Zhu ^f