Interviewers who expect people to share financial data get more of it

It turns out that survey interviewers' expectations about whether people will share financial information actually influence how much information they get. If an interviewer expects people to answer questions about income and assets, they are more likely to get those answers.

Collecting accurate financial data is hard, and surveys often have big gaps because people don't want to share. This paper shows that the person asking the questions matters more than previously thought. It means that training interviewers to expect cooperation could improve data quality for economists and policymakers who rely on these surveys.