Hi --
http://kmblogs.
com/public/item/128800
May 25, 2006
Information Markets
A NEW WAY OF MAKING DECISIONS
Edited by Robert W. Hahn and Paul C. Tetlock
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 22, 2006
Information Markets: A New Way of Making Decisions, edited
by Robert W. Hahn
and Paul C. Tetlock, is a collection of essays providing a
state-of-the-art
analysis of the potential for information markets to
significantly aid
decision-making in both the public and private sectors. The
authors assess
what we really know about information markets, examine their
potential for
improving public policy, propose a research agenda to help
improve our
understanding of such markets, and explain how to improve
their design.
Information markets, also known as prediction or event
markets, are
exchanges in which buyers and sellers come together to form
contracts based
on their expectations regarding the outcome of an uncertain
event. Because
the contract prices in these markets often predict the event
outcomes better
than leading experts, they have attracted substantial
attention from
academics, corporate executives, and the media.
The first major information market was started in the late
1980s, when a
handful of academics at the University of Iowa’s business
school decided to
give their students some hands-on trading experience by
allowing them to bet
real money on the outcomes of various events, such as who
would be the next
president of the United States.
Today, the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) are a thriving
nonprofit
enterprise, offering markets in which traders can wager on
events ranging
from the outcome of presidential elections to the periodic
interest-rate
decisions of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee.
The success of the IEM has spurred a number of other popular
information
markets:
• Over $1 billion worth of event contracts have been traded
in the last
three years on Ireland-based Tradesports.com, which has
markets for a
variety of events, including elections, military actions,
and high-profile
court decisions. Tradesports.com’s contract prices predicted
all fifty
states correctly for Bush and Kerry in the 2004 election.
• The Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX.com) has registered over
1 million users
since 1996 and has predicted Oscar award winners with 92
percent accuracy
over the last three years, despite the fact that its
contracts are
play-money only.
• Major corporations—including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft,
Lilly, and
Google—have allowed employees to bet via internal
information markets to
help predict progress benchmarks.
Why do information markets work as well as they do? No
individual, no
matter how knowledgeable, is likely to know everything about
the
probabilities of certain events. By allowing experts and
amateurs to trade
with one another, markets aggregate disparate pieces of
information into a
single, useful figure: the contract price. Moreover, not
every opinion or
piece of information is weighted equally. Traders with the
best access to
valuable information often bet more than uninformed traders,
thus
influencing the contract price accordingly. This stands in
contrast to
polls, board meetings, or other prediction mechanisms in
which it may be
hard to distinguish those participants who are most
confident in their
judgments.
Information Markets: A New Way of Making Decisions provides
a comprehensive
look at the markets’ key characteristics and their potential
political,
economic, and social applications.
Robert W. Hahn is cofounder and executive director of the
AEI-Brookings
Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and is a resident
scholar at AEI. Paul
C. Tetlock is an assistant professor of finance at the
University of Texas
at Austin, McCombs School of Business.
Contributing Authors:
• Michael B. Abramowicz, associate professor of law, George
Washington
University Law School
• Joyce E. Berg, associate professor of accounting,
University of Iowa,
Tippie College of Business
• Robin D. Hanson, associate professor of economics, George
Mason University
• John O. Ledyard, Alan and Lenabelle Davis Professor of
Economics and
Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology
• Thomas A. Rietz, Hershberger Faculty Research Fellow and
associate
professor of finance, University of Iowa, Tippie College of
Business
• Cass R. Sunstein, Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service
Professor of
Jurisprudence, Law School and Department of Political
Science, University of
Chicago
• Justin Wolfers, assistant professor of business and public
policy, Wharton
School, University of Pennsylvania
• Eric Zitzewitz, assistant professor of economics, Stanford
University’s
Graduate School of Business
Also see non-commercial, open action/research community
event:
http://www.pmcluster.com/
-j
-----Original Message-----
From: Information_Systems_Forum@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:Information_Systems_Forum@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 1:09 PM
To: Information_Systems_Forum@yahoogroups.com
Subject: (ISF) Digest Number 1411
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There are 3 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. The Cyber-Yenta goes on hiatus
From: "Deborah"
deborah_elizabeth_finn post.harvard.edu
2. HumaniNet's Plone Documentation
From: "Matt Blair" mattelsewisemedia.com
3. Fwd: MoveOn and Christian Coalition Join For Network
Neutrality!
From: "Ja Young" jmytdyahoo.com
____________________________________________________________
____________
____________________________________________________________
____________
Message 1
From: "Deborah" deborah_elizabeth_finnpost.harvard.edu
Date: Thu May 25, 2006 5:23pm(PDT)
Subject: The Cyber-Yenta goes on hiatus
Dear Colleagues,
What with attending the NetSquared conference and a couple
of other things,
I'm taking a little hiatus as your moderator.
As usual, my lovely and talented assistant, John McNutt,
will be stepping up
as your moderator for the duration. Please be nice to him
- he's not thrilled about missing the NetSquared
conference.
Many thanks and best regards from Deborah
Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
deborah_elizabeth_finnpost.harvard.edu
www.cyber-yenta.org
____________________________________________________________
____________
____________________________________________________________
____________
Message 2
From: "Matt Blair" mattelsewisemedia.com
Date: Fri May 26, 2006 5:44am(PDT)
Subject: HumaniNet's Plone Documentation
[Apologies for cross-posting - some of you may see this on
several lists
over the next day or two.]
At the beginning of 2005, HumaniNet began working with
Plone, an open-
source content management system (CMS), to streamline our
publishing
process, share notes and research, and create spaces for
project
collaboration.
We have just published a set of documentation about our
experiences,
including lessons learned, our custom workflows, a number of
how-to
documents, etc. Here is the link:
http://groups.human
inet.org/about
While many of the details are specific to Plone, there is
also some general
information about evaluating and deploying open source
software for
non-profits. We hope many of you find it helpful.
Matt Blair
=====
For more information about HumaniNet, please go to our main
site at
www.humaninet.org.
For more information about Plone, please visit plone.org.
____________________________________________________________
____________
____________________________________________________________
____________
Message 3
From: "Ja Young" jmytdyahoo.com
Date: Fri May 26, 2006 5:52am(PDT)
Subject: Fwd: MoveOn and Christian Coalition Join For
Network Neutrality!
Hi All - Thought I would pass this on. Amazing but true!
Check out the ad -
its good. Take care, Ja Young
"Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org Civic Action"
<moveon-helplist.moveon.org> wrote:
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 09:10:06 -0700
From: "Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org Civic Action"
<moveon-helplist.moveon.org>
To: "JoAnne Young" <jmytdyahoo.com>
Subject: MoveOn and Christian Coalition on the same page?
body, td, font, p, div, blockquote { font-family: arial,
verdana,
sans-serif !important; font-size: 10pt !important; } td,
font, p, div,
blockquote { overflow-x: hidden; } As Congress
prepares to
vote, MoveOn and the Christian Coalition are joining forces
to show that
Internet freedom affects everyone.
Can you contribute $35 to run this unique MoveOn/Christian
Coalition New
York Times ad?
Click Here
Dear MoveOn member,
We never thought we'd see the day, but it's come: we're
working together
with the Christian Coalition. You read that right—the
Christian Coalition
has joined everyone from Google to MoveOn to the Gun Owners
of America in
the fight for Internet freedom. The momentum is on our side.
Internet companies like AT&T have been trying to win
this fight by telling
Republicans in Congress this is just a left-wing issue. But
MoveOn and the
Christian Coalition have designed a full-page New York Times
ad to expose
the truth: people across the spectrum are united behind
Internet freedom! If
we get that message out, we win.
The ad will cost $70,000 to run. If 2,000 people give $35
each, we'll be
there. Plus, every dollar you give will be matched by a
generous bequest.
Can you contribute to run an Internet freedom ad with the
improbable pairing
of MoveOn and the Christian Coalition? Click here to see the
ad and make a
donation:
https://civic.moveon.org/donatec4/sa
ve_the_internet.html?id=7779-3220920-BRJ
AvTXFv5_Xt92f4Cye5g&t=3
This ad will make a big splash in Congress, with the public,
and in the
news. We'll share the cost of the ad with our partners, and
any funds raised
above our share will help support the organizing costs of
MoveOn's Internet
freedom campaign.
Last year, we received a very humbling gift: a MoveOn member
named us in her
will for over half a million dollars. This money is set up
as a matching
fund for critically important initiatives like this one.
Every dollar you
give today will bring in a dollar from this bequest, up to
$100,000.
Everyone knows we deeply disagree with the Christian
Coalition on many
issues. It's safe to say the same is true for them. But we
can agree on
preserving the Internet as a venue for democratic
participation, economic
innovation, and free speech.1 The only serious opposition to
Internet
freedom comes from AT&T and other Internet operators who
are spending
millions lobbying Congress for more control over what we see
and do online.
To win this fight, we need to show Congress the huge public
backlash they
will face if they sell out the Internet. The pairing of
MoveOn and the
Christian Coalition is unheard of, and it's sure to get
Congress' attention.
Help run this attention-getting ad featuring MoveOn and the
Christian
Coalition. You can make a contribution at:
https://civic.moveon.org/donatec4/sa
ve_the_internet.html?id=7779-3220920-BRJ
AvTXFv5_Xt92f4Cye5g&t=4
Internet users of all political stripes are fighting
back together. The
SavetheInternet.com Coalition—led by Free Press—includes the
Christian
Coalition, MoveOn, Gun Owners of America, the ACLU, Craig
from Craigslist,
Free Press, small businesses, consumer advocates, Internet
advocates,
musicians such as Moby, R.E.M., Q-Tip, The Roots, Trent
Reznor of NIN, the
Indigo Girls, and the Dixie Chicks, and over 700 other
organizations from
around the country.
Also supporting Net Neutrality are high-tech pioneers like
Google, Amazon,
and eBay, as well as "fathers of the Internet"
Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee
(the inventor of the www). We're part of something huge.
Thank you for all you do.
–Eli Pariser, Adam Green, Noah T. Winer, and the MoveOn.org
Civic Action
team
Thursday, May 25th, 2006
P.S. You can find out more about naming MoveOn as a
beneficiary in your will
by clicking here:
[Removed link because it contained name of original
recipient of e-mail.]
Source:
1. "Christian Coalition Announces Support for 'Net
Neutrality' to Prevent
Giant Phone and Cable Companies From Discriminating Against
Web Sites,"
Christian Coalition, May 17, 2006
http://www.cc.or
g/content.cfm?id=329
---------------------------------
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