Jason (a Freakonomics reader):
You are giving yourself WAY too much credit. Siskel and Ebert successfully predict these awards 100% year after year. This isn’t a difficult thing to predict. Predicting something like the NCAA tourney, that would be an accomplishment, but if you look at rankings and your prediction market, you will fail just as much as the average bracket.
— Jason
Plus, the event derivative is back to 55% [UPDATE: 47%] —-slightly above tossing a coin.
Here’-s The Hill on the prospect for the bill. –- More on Memeorandum.
Previously: Insider trading in the InTrade prediction market on health care reform?
…-it is a reasonably active market but atypically a lot of the trade is coming from the DC area when normally we might see trade coming from all the major urban areas.
ADDENDUM: For your information, in Great Britain, sporting insiders (such as athletes or jockeys) who trade on betting exchanges (such as BetFair) are actively monitored.
Betting markets don’t have any mystical power, but they do summarize conventional wisdom pretty well- […]
E-mail confidentially to tell me the names of the economists who over-hype the prediction markets.
Emile Servan-Schreiber is doing a great job of putting prediction markets on the French media scene. (As I type this, he is on French TV.)
2 green-foot French economists (David Thesmar and Augustin Landier) are hyping the prediction markets in the French media, using a non-scientific language (“-predictive markets”-, “-stocks”- *) and few references to hard facts. Their background is not stellar. They penned an Op-Ed in July 2007, titled, “-The mega-crash won’-t happen”- [PDF file].
Of course, one year later, the developed world experienced (and is still experiencing) the worst financial crisis ever. What’-s funny is that, in 2007, our 2 economists-in-chief were hyping the non-regulated credit derivatives that sent us into the depression, and denying the possibility of systemic risk. What a bunch of incompetents.
Emile, please recruit more serious people.
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[*] The good vocabulary is “-prediction markets”-, and “-traded bets”- or “-event derivatives”-.
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