Graduate student Ben Spigel&#8217-s comment on Richard Florida&#8217-s blog:

About a decade ago, a group of cognitive scientists looking at Bell Labs found that all things being equal, the chances of two scientists collaborating was 4 times higher if they had offices in the same hallway, than if there was a turn in the hall between them. Basically, people are lazy about talking to other people. There&#8217-s a noticeable drop in communication when you have to turn your neck to see someone.

Reminder:

Robin Hanson in a comment on Marginal Revolution:

This is important work for organizational sociology, but not for prediction markets, as this does little to help us find and field high value markets.

Reminder:

Robin Hanson:

Info Value = the added accuracy the markets provide relative to other mechanisms, times the value that accuracy can give in improved decisions, minus the cost of maintaining the markets, relative to the cost of other mechanisms.

A highly accurate market has little value if other mechanisms can provide similar accuracy at a lower cost, or if few substantial decisions are influenced by accurate forecasts on its topic.

Related Links:

Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google – (PDF file – PDF file) – by Bo Cowgill (Google economic analyst), Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) and Eric Zitzewitz (Dartmouth College)

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