[extropy-chat] Re: Now Bush to win 1.5:1

Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu
Wed Nov 3 11:53:47 UTC 2004


Well the betting markets made a big reversal last night, from up to almost 
75% in favor of Kerry, now down to a 5% chance for Kerry (even that looks 
too high, so I finally made my first election bet).

Of course we should expect this sort of reversal at least 1/4 of the time, 
so one can't be too stunned.  But this does at least raise a small 
suspicion that theses markets were too volatile due to 
over-confidence.  However, one case won't really show this - we have to 
look at statistics over many events to see if there's a trend.

In the end the important question is comparative - are there any other 
institutions that on average do better?  So far direction comparisons 
between markets and other institutions in the field have favored 
markets.  And real and play money have come out about the same.  But the 
jury is still out.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list