From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Fri Jun 06 2003 - 10:49:14 MDT
Robin Hanson wrote:
> Idea Futures "Markets in the Future of the MidEast" will be
> open to the public for real money trading October 1, 2003:
> www.PolicyAnalysisMarket.org I've been working for
> several years to make this possible, and these markets will
> showcase an exciting new market technology, a combinatorial
> information market maker that can maintain millions of
> independent prices even when there are only a handful of
> traders.
Interesting concept. I've sometimes thought it would be kinda
fun during some discussions to be able to put one's money
where one's mouth is. But the question of who holds the money
is a bit tricky.
Although its a zero sum game financially, ie, one only makes
a dollar when someone else loses a dollar, I can see that
potentially it would give incentives to more analytical thinking
and reasoning which would be a good thing in itself. I note
that the Economist (or its backers) and DARPA are
associated.
What about transaction fees? What would be the basic
transaction unit?(presumably in US$).
How do the contracts get defined? It would seem that
the contracts must be based on binary and clearly verifiable
propositions but there are a large number of such possible
propositions how would these be arrived at?
I note that the Economist (or its backers) and DARPA are
associated.
Has this sort of futures market been created before?
- Brett Paatsch
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Jun 06 2003 - 11:04:56 MDT