Vernon Smith is bullish on event derivative markets (a.k.a. prediction markets).

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Vernon Smith (via):

So far as new applications of derivatives markets I think one possibility is we may see more people making, creating derivatives markets, betting markets on policy, public policy outcomes. We&#8217-ve already seen that with regard to the Federal Reserve. There is a market now in which people are able to make, take positions on the likelihood of a change in the Federal Reserve Bank policy at their next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, so and these markets are concerned with the question of what the Federal Reserve Bank rate will be set at. So I think we may very well see more of these kinds of markets and this could very well provide some indication of how the participants in these markets evaluate some of the policy proposals that governments are making.

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Massachusetts special election: Nate Silver knowns nothing. -REDUX

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Nate Silver:

There are many assumptions in this model which may not be valid []. Although I believe that these are generally a fairly well-balanced set of assumptions relative to the universe of possible assumptions (i.e. alternate sets of assumptions would tend to cluster around the 25 percent number), it is hard to know for sure.

You cant have accumulator bets on the weather of neighboring regions…

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&#8230- because &#8220-if it snows in one city, it&#8217-s likely to snow in another city.&#8221- In other words, these weren&#8217-t independent events.

Via Barry Ritholtz (author of Bailout Nation)