The Prime Minister of Ireland has just said he will resign, but neither InTrade nor BetFair would give the first fig.

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  1. InTrade do not have any open &#8220-Bertie Ahern&#8221- prediction markets. InTrade do not have any closed &#8220-Bertie Ahern&#8221- either.
  2. BetFair do have a series of &#8220-Bye Bye Bertie&#8221- prediction markets &#8212-still open at the time of writing. So I deduce that they would want to close the contracts just after the Irish Prime Minister&#8217-s effective resignation (in early May 2008). Which makes sense to me. (InTrade fell on Larry Craig&#8217-s false resignation, as you may remember.) The BetFair event derivative contract only states:
  • When will Bertie Ahern officially cease to be Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland? Unmatched bets will not be cancelled at any time. Users are responsible for their own positions. Users should be aware that they are NOT allowed to bet on this event if they are physically present in Austria or Germany.

BetFair static chart (resignation to happen before January 2009):

PM Ireland 2009

As a matter of experiment, I am going to try to paste just below a hot-linked BetFair chart&#8230- to see if that works (that is, if BetFair accepts that bloggers do hot-link to their live charts). If you don&#8217-t see the &#8220-Bye Bye Bertie&#8221- chart appearing in the line just below, don&#8217-t mind.

UPDATE: The experiment is successful. BetFair do accept that bloggers hot-link to their live charts. Great news. (My readers may remember that I did that same experiment with InTrade&#8217-s advanced charts, some weeks ago, and that the experiment failed. But I&#8217-ll re-do that InTrade experiment, a bit later.)

Via HubDub, The Independent

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Thanks to enterprise prediction markets, senior management can move faster to deal with problems or exploit opportunities.
  • NOTE TO SELF: Set up customized e-mail alerts for brand-new, hot Midas Oracle stuff.
  • DAYS OF RECKONING, PART TWO: Matt Drudge features the prediction markets. + Reuters has the right terminology (“traders”, “prediction exchanges”) but ignores BetFair.
  • DAYS OF RECKONING: The New York Times is telling the business world that enterprise prediction markets are an essential management tool.
  • HubDub will soon distribute a continuously-updating chart widget displaying the state of their prediction markets.