  Why do some investors delegate financial decisions to supposed experts? We
report a laboratory experiment designed to disentangle four possible motives.
Almost 600 investors drawn from the Prolific subject pool choose whether or not
to delegate a real-stakes choice among lotteries to a previous investor (an
``expert'') after seeing information on the performance of several available
experts. We find that a surprisingly large fraction of investors delegate even
trivial choice tasks, suggesting a major role for the blame shifting motive. A
larger fraction of investors delegate our more complex tasks, suggesting that
decision costs play a role for some investors. Some investors who delegate
choose a low quality expert with high earnings, suggesting a role for chasing
past performance. We find no evidence for a fourth possible motive, that
delegation makes risk more acceptable.
