Author Archives: Tom W. Bell

About Tom W. Bell

Law (Chapman University) - California, U.S.A.

U.S. Supreme Court Prediction Market — [PAPER]

Recently posted to SSRN: FantasySCOTUS: Crowdsourcing a Prediction Market for the Supreme Court, a draft paper by Josh Blackman, Adam Aft, & Corey Carpenter assessing the accuracy of the Harlan Institute’s U.S. Supreme Court prediction market, FantasySCOTUS.org. The paper compares … Continue reading

Posted in All Best Posts Ever, All Guest Authors's Posts, Analysis (Accuracy & Precision), Analysis (Market Proposals), Exchanges & Markets, Market Prices & Probabilities, Prediction Post-Mortem | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Free Speech in Event Market Claims

In addition to a joint comment with a score of signers, I also responded to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)’s Concept Release on the Appropriate Regulatory Treatment of Event Contracts by firing off a solo comment. I there focused … Continue reading

Posted in All Guest Authors's Posts, Ethics, Politics, Regulations | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The CFTC Deadline . . . Wavers

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)’s Concept Release on the Appropriate Regulatory Treatment of Event Contracts says, “Comments must be received by July 7, 2008.” What deadline does that impose? I played it safe, and assumed that I had to … Continue reading

Posted in All Guest Authors's Posts, Regulations | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Let’s Tell the CFTC Where to Go.

Update: I’ve extended the deadline for signing up until 7 p.m. Pacific, Sunday, July 6. Also, I fixed a typo in paragraph 3, changing “denying” to “giving.” (Thanks, Gil!)> The deadline looms for interested parties to respond to the Commodity … Continue reading

Posted in All Best Posts Ever, All Guest Authors's Posts, Analysis (Industry), Exchanges & Markets, Regulations | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Let Prediction Markets Fight Terrorism.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)’s recent request for comments about the regulation of prediction markets includes a number of specific questions. I am not sure whether I will manage to write up answers to all of them before the … Continue reading

Posted in All Best Posts Ever, All Guest Authors's Posts, Analysis (Meta), Exchanges & Markets, Regulations | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Protecting Private Prediction Markets

My draft paper, Private Prediction Markets and the Law, offers a variety of detailed suggestions about how to protect the former from the latter. Specifically, I offer strategies for avoiding the scope of CFTC regulation, for discouraging liability for illegal … Continue reading

Posted in All Best Posts Ever, All Guest Authors's Posts, Betting, Business, Business Administration, Exchange & Market Designs, Exchanges & Markets, Gambling, Mechanism Designs, Regulations | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Building Exits into CFTC Regulation

Much of my draft paper, Private Prediction Markets and the Law, focuses on nuts-and-bolts fixes for the legal uncertainty that currently afflicts private prediction markets under U.S. law. I’ll say more about those in later posts to Agoraphilia and Midas … Continue reading

Posted in All Best Posts Ever, All Guest Authors's Posts, Exchanges & Markets, Regulations | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Insider Trading and Private Prediction Markets

People who run in-house, corporate prediction markets have told me that U.S. laws against illegal insider trading give them nightmares. The problem arises because a private prediction market typically generates material nonpublic information about the corporation that hosts it. If … Continue reading

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Getting from Collective Intelligence to Collective Action

I really enjoyed attending the Collective Intelligence FOO Camp, sponsored by Google and O’Reilly Media, last weekend. I’d been expecting a sort of geek slumber party, and had looked forward to rolling out my awesome Darth Vader impersonation. I was … Continue reading

Posted in All Guest Authors's Posts, Analysis (Market Proposals), Collective Intelligence - Wisdom Of Crowds, Inventions & Innovations, Regulations | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Quake Markets

Markets offer us a potentially useful tool for predicting earthquakes. Imagine the San Andreas fault divided into segments, each of which carries a price based on the present discounted disvalue of a future quake. That price would reflect both a … Continue reading

Posted in All Guest Authors's Posts, Analysis (Market Proposals), Forecasting (Science & Practice) | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments