DISQUS

Seth Finkelstein · 3 years ago

As I'm sure you know, this sort of betting has been done in e.g. England, for years. And has also been going on for years with the "Iowa Electronic Markets". The problem is, market-worship to the contrary, it's not really all that useful. For some extremely deep reasons - e.g. accurate information doesn't sell well in the media.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing. But it's already been around, and done nothing much except produce some self-referential punditry.

Tom · 3 years ago

Granted, Seth, that some markets have offered trading on some political claims. But I think WSX offers a real leap forward in terms of the extent of coverage, focus on political events, and user interface. Those are not incidental matters, either, when you're asking what it will take to get media types to start referencing a prediction market.

Seth Finkelstein · 3 years ago

How is it better than, e.g., Intrade.com ? That's had extensive scope and focus on political events.

WSX isn't even using real money!

Tom · 3 years ago

It looks like a lot of the Intrade claims are pretty inactive. For whatever reason, Intrade has hardly proven especially effective in handling political claims. Maybe too many U.S. citizens fear the reach of local anti-gaming laws. Or maybe they don't like the Intrade interface. At any rate, I say: "Let the market (in markets) decide!"

As for the real/play money distinction, some scholarship indicates that it doesn't really matter much. Or, to be more precise, it looks as if real money markets do better at rewarding discovery whereas play money ones do better at collecting information. I'm a big fan of real money markets, but I'm not sure they're absolutely necessary in this context, where we care more about measuring preferences than we do rewarding innovation.