Experts' Versus Laymen's Expectations: Some Survey Evidence

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a questionnaire survey conducted recently in the city of Taipei on people's expectations regarding certain macroeconomic variables, such as consumer prices, the GNP growth rate, and the money supply growth rate. The survey sample is divided into two groups: “non-economists” and “economists”. We find that there is a significant difference between economists' and non-economists' expectation behavior. We also find that only a very small fraction of people (26.8% among economists and 6.5% of non-economists) can say how many % they expect the money supply growth rate will be.