Fact: A story in Science Daily this week, “Election Forecasters Preparing For Historic Election,” relates the publication this month of the “assembled insights of prominent election forecasters in a special issue of the International Journal of Forecasting.”
Analysis: The journal articles are available here for download. One of them, “Prediction Market Accuracy in the Long Run” (by Joyce E. Berg, Forrest D. Nelson, and Thomas A. Reitz from the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business), compares the presidential election forecasts produced from the granddaddy of them all, the Iowa Electronic Market (IEM), to “forecasts from an exhaustive body of opinion polls.” Science Daily says they find that the IEM is “usually more accurate than the polls.”
If we extrapolate out, these election markets are special cases of prediction markets, and I’m always interested in those.
Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: 2008 election, academia, academic, assassination, Barack Obama, campaign, Chris Masse, election, Forrest D. Nelson, future, futurology, IEM, International Journal of Forecasting, Iowa Electronic Market, James E. Campbell, John McCain, Joyce E. Berg, McCain, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, MidasOracle, MSR, Obama, political, politics, prediction, prediction market, prediction markets, predictive analysis, presidency, presidental election, research, saas, Science Daily, Thomas A. Reitz, University of Buffalo, University of Iowa, Wikipedia | 3 Comments »
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