Marginal Revolutions Tyler Cowen re-writes history to favor his GMU colleague.

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I respectfully disagree with that.

#1. BetFair floated CEO Resignation event derivatives back in 2004 &#8212-2 years before Robin Hanson&#8217-s CEO Firing idea [CORRECTION: see below], and 3 years before PaddyPower&#8217-s press release.

#2. Robin Hanson was about decision markets, in his Forbes Op-Ed &#8212-neither about prediction markets nor book betting.

#3. The main obstacle of implementing Robin Hanson&#8217-s concept of decision markets is the business executives&#8217- egos. Why would they outsource the decision making to a crowd machine if the added value is marginal? Publishing complacent blog posts on the premier economics blog won&#8217-t solve this problem.

Trying to sell decision markets to business executives is like trying to sell robotized dildos to young, horny men. Whatever the merit of the product, they don&#8217-t need it &#8212-they prefer using their own thing (if you see what I mean). :-D

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UPDATE: Comment from Robin Hanson&#8230-

You make a valid point about there being a difference between CEO futures and decision markets. It is the board, not the CEO, who we might hope would be willing to overrule the CEO ego. And I&#8217-ve had a web page arguing for CEO decision markets since 1996.

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Robin Hanson (back in April 1996):

[…] The main proponent of this Vote No campaign thinks the following proposal of mine has promise. I propose to create, for each stock, a separate market in that stock for trades which are &#8220-called-off&#8221- if the CEO does not step down in the next year. The price of the stock in this market should indicate the market&#8217-s expectation of the value of that company with a different CEO. If that stock price is consistently and significantly higher than the ordinary stock price, that should be a clear market signal, from informed traders, for the CEO to step down. (If there is no price, because there is no trading, then there is no signal.)Ordinarily CEOs respond to statistics showing how poorly their company is fairing relative to similar companies by explaining how they are really different. And they respond to statistics of unhappy shareholders by pointing out how little incentives any one of them has to become well informed. These excuses should be blunted by my proposal, and board members may more plausibly fear legal action for ignoring these market signals.

This proposal is an example of a more general concept of policy markets.

2 thoughts on “Marginal Revolutions Tyler Cowen re-writes history to favor his GMU colleague.

  1. Robin Hanson said:

    You make a valid point about there being a difference between CEO futures and decision markets. It is the board, not the CEO, who we might hope would be willing to overrule the CEO ego. And I’ve had a web page arguing for CEO decision markets since 1996.

  2. Robin Hanson said:

    You make a valid point about there being a difference between CEO futures and decision markets. It is the board, not the CEO, who we might hope would be willing to overrule the CEO ego. And I’ve had a web page arguing for CEO decision markets since 1996.

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