Category Archives: Analysis (Meta)

Yet another prediction market newbie who should be meeting with Robin Hanson one on one to get a little injection about conditional prediction markets and how they could be useful for BOTH private decision makers AND public policy makers.

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Lewis Sheperd (the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments):

Indeed, it appears to me that [prediction markets] are growing not from corporate or government use, but mostly organically from within academia, stock-futures circles and political-junkie communities. I&#8217-m reading the interesting variety of writers and prediction-marketeers at Midas Oracle, which brings together widely ranging posts from faculty members at Harvard and other universities, daytraders, and even a few “amateurs.”

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Lewis Sheperd notes in his post that a number of for-profit companies (like Google and General Electric) are using private prediction markets (a.k.a. enterprise prediction markets). Non-for-profit organizations (like governmental agencies) would do great, too, using the same forecasting tool &#8212-an &#8220-information aggregation mechanism&#8221- (IAM), more exactly.

Robin Hanson, instead of boring us with philosophy, go evangelizing that newbie.

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UPDATE: Yes, he is willing to learn. :-D See his comment.

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Reality-Mined Prediction Markets

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Meet professor Thomas W. Malone (on the right), from the MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence.
  • Tom W. Bell rebuts the puritan and sterile petition organized by the American Enterprise Institute (which has on its payroll Paul Wolfowitz, the bright masterminder of the Iraq war).
  • The upcoming CFTC ruling may come as thunder and lightning —or may not. That is the question. Will they exempt or will they regulate?
  • PROF TOM W. BELL, PLEASE, DO SKIP THE PAGAN CELEBRATIONS, AND, PLEASE, DO RETURN TO YOUR DESK TO FINISH THE DRAFT OF YOUR COMMENT TO THE CFTC. THANKS FOR YOUR PRAGMATIC (NOT ‘ETHEREAL’) CONTRIBUTION TO “THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY”. (There is a hidden slam to Robin Hanson in this title. I wonder whether people will get the joke.)
  • The CFTC is going to close the comments in 3 days. We have 3 days left to convince the CFTC to accept FOR-PROFIT prediction exchanges (e.g., InTrade USA or BetFair USA), and counter the puritan and sterile petition organized by the American Enterprise Institute (which has on its payroll Paul Wolfowitz, the bright masterminder of the Iraq war).
  • TOM W. BELL: “Thanks, Chris. Thanks, too, for being such an effective gadfly. I might well have blown off the whole exercise if you had not kept blogging about how you were awaiting my comment!”
  • What to think of HedgeStreet’s comment to the CFTC

Prediction Markets within the Forecasting Community

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I have downloaded the final program schedule (PDF file) of the 28th International Symposium on Forecasting, and browsed thru all the paper abstracts that will be presented. Wow. There are dozens and dozens.. many one hundred or two&#8230- It took me a while to get to the bottom of that file.

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I saw 3 or 4 papers on prediction markets (or &#8220-betting markets&#8221-).

I spotted some names I know. :-D

Besides Andreas, who will be at Nice for the symposium?

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The field of prediction markets can be seen as a sub-set of the forecasting community. However, browsing the forecasting paper abstracts, I came up with the idea that we are competitors of all those guys / gals. We propose a process by which traders (like bees) go out there and gather all bits of information (sometimes coming from those forecasting experts), and a market mechanism delivers a collective verdict about what&#8217-s going to happen. One can set up a prediction market, and skips the reading of those forecasting experts&#8217- reports &#8212-let the incentivized traders do the work. In that perspective, the prediction market process is both more meta than the forecasting methods and also a competitor of them.

Why bother reading all those forecasting experts&#8217- reports when we can read the prediction markets?

Convenience, convenience, convenience.

Time is money. Let the incentivized traders do the time-consuming work.

And we get the honey. :-D

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Why did prediction markets do well in the pre-polling era, professor Strumpf?

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Koleman Stumpf

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • The best research papers on prediction markets
  • 2008 Electoral Map
  • American Enterprise Institute’s Center For Regulatory And Market Studies (Policy Markets)
  • IIF’s SIG on Prediction Markets
  • Science
  • Mozilla FireFox users, do you have trouble downloading academic papers (as PDF files) from SSRN?
  • “Impact Matrix. Used to collect and gauge the likelihood and business impact of various events in the very long term.”

DIY enterprise prediction markets as revelators of institutional lies

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Adam Siegel of Inkling Markets:

Mike,

The context of that discussion was talking about allowing people to create their own markets vs. having them only be run by a central entity or only through recommendations by a consulting firm.

We were also talking about the insights you may get by running prediction markets that are not readily apparent in the market results.

The original point was, by allowing people to ask as many questions as possible, the questions may be a signal themselves pointing to something that you didn’t previously know about. If someone asks a question about the probability of a risk factor occurring that you never even considered before, for example. That would never have been uncovered, otherwise, because the “prediction market administrators” wouldn’t even have known to ask.

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Prediction & Decision Markets – Robin Hanson Edition

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Presentation:

Prediction &amp- Decision Markets – (PPT file) – by Robin Hanson – 2008-04-17

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And, that one, for your curiosity&#8230- really fascinating ( :-D ):

Evolutionary Game Theory of Interstellar Colonization – (PPT file) – by Robin Hanson – 2008-05-26

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Kudos to BetFair’s e-mail marketing team?
  • Conditional prediction markets about oil price and SegWay sales… Like the idea, Robin Hanson?
  • Justin Wolfers [*] is the most cited prediction market economist
  • The Orb @ Texas Tech University
  • IS IT SAFE TO LOCATE A PREDICTION EXCHANGE NEAR A RIVER???
  • RIVER RISING. POWER PLANT CLOSED. IOWA ELECTRONIC MARKETS AT RISK? DEVELOPING…
  • U.S. COAST GUARDS DEPLOYED TO SAVE THE IOWA ELECTRONIC MARKETS

The Wikipedia entry on prediction markets looks like a messy Marrakesh bazaar. – Shame on all members of the field of prediction markets -including the author of this present, finger-wagging post.

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The Wikipedia entry on prediction markets does not seem to be well maintained.

Here are the warnings that welcome visitors. The first of the 2 warnings has been up since November 2007 &#8212-that&#8217-s 7 months ago!!!!!!

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And the definition opens on the big myth, create by IEM, and perpetuated by some scholars:

Prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions.

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It&#8217-s a big myth.

The TradeSports and BetFair prediction markets were primarily created to satisfy the traders &#8212-their predictions come as an interesting offspring.

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Extreme Prediction Markets & Ethics

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While Robin Hanson was busy signing Bob&#8217-s petitions and blablabling on philosophy, Jason Ruspini answered the questions.

Jason Ruspini (&#8221-The Brain&#8221-) has established himself as one of the experts in the field of prediction markets. Listen up.

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1-2) These markets could have insider trading restrictions and forced settlement w/ new contract set.
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3-4) The CFTC/NFA could monitor a “large trader” list and have special reporting requirements for them. If trading seemed unreasonable given the objective outlook for a candidate, they could begin an investigation.
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5) Don’t void or unwind the market, just settle the contracts at the price immediately before the event and then start a new set of contracts as soon as possible.
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The only problem there is what happens when a price manipulation precedes an event such that the manipulated outcome locks-in the “manipulated” prices. The arrangements in 3-4) would go a long way towards addressing that scenario. Failing that, contracts could be worded in such a way to allow for freezing funds and unwinding trades in that sort of situation. Also, it would be difficult for a trader to set-off a feedback loop in a liquid binary market even if they were very large.

He asks questions; youll provide answers.

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I would like to ask the U.S. contributors to Midas Oracle what they would make of a prediction market for the 2012 Democratic nomination where one contender was backed heavily, at any price, despite losing every single primary heavily for months.
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The Democratic nomination is only a once every four years event, but similar things to this happen regularly on tennis markets in the last 12 months.
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The questions are
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(1) What if Hillary Clinton herself wagered millions of dollars that she would not be the next Democratic candidate?
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(2) What if someone had the power to knock Hillary Clinton out of the race somehow had wagered millions on her not being the 2012 candidate? An example where this could happen would be the tournament where a spectator knifed Monica Seles during that tennis match in the early 90s. She would then not be able to win that tournament, but what if there is a financial incentive for people to injure participants, like with Seles? Or if someone assassinated Clinton? Should that market be paid out?
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(3) Should people be able to bet in near unlimited size on prediction markets, who weren’t regular bettors/traders? If it is a brand new account waging a quarter of a million dollars on a tennis player to lose, should that account have been restricted before placing that bet?
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(4) Should there be circumstances where a multi-million pound gamble is paid out on Obama 2012, if over a period of a number of months, someone had backed him heavily to win the nomination, even though he was losing every single primary?
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(5) If someone knifed Maria Sharapova, as happened with Monica Seles, you could make the argument that bets on that tournament should be void, if the knifeman has bet heavily on Sharapova not to win it, and because of her being knifed, she then doesn’t make the final and win. However, you could then reach a situation where someone injures a player deliberately, expecting that a prediction market would be voided, which they could also benefit from financially. A situation like this occurred in England in the seasons 1995/1996 and 1996/1997, where floodlights at soccer games were deliberately sabotaged, forcing abandonment of the matches concerned, as a result of the saboteurs not liking the half time scoreline. There is an incentive for someone to bet heavily against a Seles or a Sharapova, and then seriously wound or assault them to alter the outcome of a sports prediction market, but there is also an incentive to try to get a prediction market voided. The knifeman benefits from ensuring that Sharapova or Seles cannot win the tournament, but the saboteur benefits from the market being voided. The answer to the first one is probably to void the market due to foul play, removing the financial incentive to knife a female tennis player, but the chance to get a void market will provide a financial incentive to try to get the event abandoned,………. how should the arbiters of a prediction market put the right safeguards in place to remove financial moral hazard from the market?

Answer these questions below this present post or here.

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