The rational part of me says, "Go to Congress and get a law passed to clean up the situation." But the realistic part of me says that Congress has pretty much abdicated careful lawmaking and now everything is permitted/forbidden by semi-arbitrary executive and judicial decrees.
Prediction markets have been a feature in the UK twenty years. I've yet to hear any media outlet quote the implied probability next to the latest poll data.
One of the concerns raised is that it could lead to election manipulation. From our own work, we find that there may be some manipulation attempts. However, I think it is unlikely to sway large markets between leading candidates. It may lead to a bias towards 50%, particularly for very small candidates who end up being artificially propped up (though we can't disentangle manipulation intent from partisan-motivated reasoning).
Thanks. It’s an interesting theoretical concern, but polls can also be manipulated, and we don’t ban polling as a result (in fact we don’t even try to ban manipulating polls.)
Yes, to be clear, my point is that manipulations are unlikely to have an effect on the comparisons between the main contenders. I think it is not a good argument to ban prediction markets.
The rational part of me says, "Go to Congress and get a law passed to clean up the situation." But the realistic part of me says that Congress has pretty much abdicated careful lawmaking and now everything is permitted/forbidden by semi-arbitrary executive and judicial decrees.
Prediction markets have been a feature in the UK twenty years. I've yet to hear any media outlet quote the implied probability next to the latest poll data.
Yeah, good point. But I think there are a lot of smart people (such as Silver) who will change those norms over the coming years.
One of the concerns raised is that it could lead to election manipulation. From our own work, we find that there may be some manipulation attempts. However, I think it is unlikely to sway large markets between leading candidates. It may lead to a bias towards 50%, particularly for very small candidates who end up being artificially propped up (though we can't disentangle manipulation intent from partisan-motivated reasoning).
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/123/568/491/5079498
Thanks. It’s an interesting theoretical concern, but polls can also be manipulated, and we don’t ban polling as a result (in fact we don’t even try to ban manipulating polls.)
Yes, to be clear, my point is that manipulations are unlikely to have an effect on the comparisons between the main contenders. I think it is not a good argument to ban prediction markets.