Here’s an interesting article on futures markets used for non-commodities — the stuff that, in one instance, caused a huge flap in DC when DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market was painted as a “terrorism futures” grotesquerie.
On the face of it, having people bet on disasters sounds downright appalling. However, the core idea of the project rests on solid scientific foundations. Studies over a 20-year period have amassed a wealth of evidence that under the right circumstances, carefully designed markets can be among the most effective prediction tools.
Economists have found, for instance, that orange juice futures predict the weather in Florida better than conventional weather forecasts do. And on the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, Wall Street traders correctly guessed within minutes of first hearing the news which of the four main suppliers had provided the faulty part, whereas a blue-ribbon panel of experts took months to come to the same conclusion.
Markets, such as the New York Stock Exchange, distill the collective wisdom of millions of individuals into a single statistic, and they do so with amazing efficiency. In contrast to other information-gathering institutions, such as committees and polls, markets require participants to put hard dollars behind their opinions. What’s more, markets reward the people who are right, not those who lie convincingly or are loudest or most aggressive or who have the longest string of titles after their name.
Interesting stuff, if only so that you can read about a research team named “Plott and Sunder.”
(via GeekPress)