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Intrade Shutdown Hurts Academics

Posted by timothy on from the odds-are-against-immediate-return dept.

New submitter jader3rd writes "Intrade, a popular Irish website that lets people bet on anything, has shut down. In addition to being used by gamblers, Intrade has been used by academics and pundits to track public sentiment. '"... broad crowds have a lot of information and that markets are an effective way of aggregating that information," says Justin Wolfers, "and they often turn out to be much better than experts."' Being forced to lose their U.S. customers couldn't have helped.

1 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The problem I have with futures trading is that it creates incentive for things to go one way or another.

    What if I were to bet 500k that ${ASSASSINATION_TARGET} was not going to die by getting shot and then thrown in the east river tomorrow?
    Someone who sees that would then have incentive to make that happen.

    Even in more limited ways it can still be a problem. Sports history has instances of people throwing games in order to make large amounts of money. I could see the same causing sabotage in industry. You cant publicly bet on things without changing the probability that they will happen.