Testing a policy intervention in the lab: differences between students and non-students in switching bank accounts.

The reliance on student samples has long been a subject of debate in experimental approaches to studying behaviour. We contribute to this discussion by looking at differences in financial behaviour between a student and a non-student sample in three sets of lab experiments conducted in Spain, Germany and Poland (n=857). Participants from both samples switched more often and made better financial decisions after they received a message encouraging them to switch financial service providers.