The Pentagon's hastily retracted plan for a futures market in terrorism is actually a small diamond of idea hidden in a great steaming turd of misapplication and public relations incompetence.
One pioneer of using contrived markets of this kind to aid decision-making is Bernardo Huberman of HP Labs, with whom I've had several very interesting discussions on this and other topics. One of his ideas has been to get senior HP staff to bet real money on the company's financials in the coming year. The idea is that for relatively little outlay, HP can get a much more accurate forecast than would otherwise be possible. And those who guess the numbers right take home a nice bonus. Here's a short write-up from The Economist.
And if that's too heavy for you, you can always stick with Celebdaq.
Posted by timo at July 30, 2003 08:08 PM | TrackBack