European Foresight Project Launches Prediction Market.
Andreas Graefe June 10th, 2007
In line with the European foresight project EPIS run by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, which aims at predicting long-term developments in the content industry, the non-commercial play-money prediction market TechForX has been launched parallel to a Delphi study.
While in the Delphi a small number of selected experts are asked to judge predefined theses, it is the goal of TechForX to enhance traditional foresight activities by involving a preferably broad public. Thus, TechForX invites every internet user to participate by revealing his / her opinion on a subset of the same theses that are asked in the Delphi.
The results will be incorporated in EPIS to improve strategic decision-making of European policy makers. Furthermore, the findings will be analyzed in my dissertation which aims at comparing the applicability of prediction markets for long-term developments to established approaches like the Delphi.
Your support for this research project by registering and participating at www.techforx.org is very much appreciated!
To get an impression on the discussed topics, here are some of the theses that are currently traded on TechForX:
- More money is spent on internet advertising in search engines and navigation tools than on television advertising.
- On average, users spend more time watching personalized TV on demand than fixed programs.
- A value added tax (VAT) for transactions within virtual worlds (like Second Life) is raised.
- Online self-publication of books (without involving publishing houses) is the predominant way of commercial distribution, even for established authors.
- Virtual visits to museums over the internet are more popular than physical visits.
Some good ideas here, but…
Claims look very underspecified to me. What does “never” mean? What does “most content” mean? What does “content” mean? “Profits without DRM” is true now unless web pages are not content. What data sources will be used to judge the claims?
And it is inexcusable for markets to not have permalinks accessible without logging in.
Mike Linksvayer is right, each event derivative should have a permanent URL and be indexed by the search engines.
To get to an event derivative, I would “google” this:
topic site:predictionexchange.com
and I would land on the specific page.
Unfortunately, the main prediction exchanges are not searchable.
I completely agree with Mike, the claims are indeed very underspecified.
However, they have been predefined for the Delphi study. In a Delphi, you knowingly do not specify the claims too strong in order not to narrow the way of thinking of participants and to achieve a preferably broad range of opinions. It is not always the “ex post accuracy” of predictions that matters most when informing decision-making. You need somhow “ex ante assessments” of future developments since the accuracy of long-term predictions can anyway not be judged in the present.
It is the aim of TechForX to analyze the capability of prediction markets (maybe the term “idea futures” or “information markets” would fit better here) for long-term forecasting compared to established approaches like the Delphi. Thus, in order to be able to compare both approaches it was necessary to formulate the claims exactly the same way. It is like Robin Hanson said: “Always remember that the relevant comparison is between different mechanisms on the *same* problem.”
Hence, the claims will not be judged (since simply no data sources are available) after the end of the study, neither in the Delphi nor in TechForX. The results just provide one of many inputs in the foresight process. The question is whether prediction markets are applicable as an instrument for foresight.
Thus, the particular aim of my dissertation is to compare both approaches with respect to different methodological aspects like for instance user behaviour (e.g. how often do participants change their minds), satisfaction with results (e.g. is there a consensus), etc.
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The missing permalinks are indeed a problem.