How does one effectively aggregate disparate pieces of information that are spread among many different individuals? In other words, how does one best access the ‘wisdom of the crowd’? Prediction markets, which are essentially speculative markets created for the purpose of aggregating information and making predictions, offer the answer to this question. The effective use of these markets has the potential not only to help forecast future events on a national and international level, but also to assist companies, for example, in providing improved estimates of the potential market size for a new product idea or the launch date of new products and services. The markets have already been used to forecast uncertain outcomes ranging from influenza to the spread of infectious diseases, to the demand for hospital services, to the box office success of movies, climate change, vote shares and election outcomes, to the probability of meeting project deadlines. The insights gained also have many potentially valuable applications for public policy more generally. These markets offer substantial promise as a tool of information aggregation as well as forecasting, whether alone or as a supplement to other mechanisms like opinion surveys, group deliberations, panels of experts and focus groups. Moreover, they can be applied at a macroeconomic and microeconomic level to yield information that is valuable for government and commercial policy-makers and which can be used for a number of social purposes. This volume of original readings, contributed by many of the leading experts in the field, marks a significant addition to the base of knowledge about this fascinating subject area. The book should be of interest to anyone looking at monetary economics, economic forecasting and microeconomics.

Accurate predictions are essential in many areas such as corporate decision making, weather forecasting and technology forecasting. Prediction markets help to aggregate information and gain a better understanding of the future by leveraging the wisdom of the crowds. Trading prices in prediction markets thus reflect the traders’ aggregated expectations on the outcome of uncertain future events and can be used to predict the likelihood of these events. This book demonstrates that markets are accurate predictors. Results from several empirical studies reported in this work show the importance of designing such markets properly in order to derive valuable predictions. Therefore, the findings are valuable for designing future prediction markets.

I started my career on Wall Street in 1978. For the past 40 years on the Street, I have been thinking and writing about the economy and financial markets as both an economist and an investment strategist. While I have a solid academic background to be a Wall Street prognosticator, I learned a great deal on the job. In this book, I share my professional insights into predicting the economy and financial markets.

Why Prediction Markets Are Good for Business From selecting the lead actress in a Broadway musical, to predicting a crucial delay in the delivery of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner months before the CEO knew about it, to accurately forecasting US presidential elections—prediction markets have realized some amazing successes by aggregating the wisdom of crowds. Until now, the potential for this unique approach has remained merely an interesting curiosity. But a handful of innovative organizations—GE, Google, Motorola, Microsoft, Eli Lily, even the CIA—has successfully tapped employee insights to change how business gets done. In Oracles, Don Thompson explains how these and other firms use prediction markets to make better decisions, describing what could be the origins of a social revolution. Thompson shows how prediction markets can: • draw on the hidden knowledge of every employee • tap the “intellectual bandwidth” of retired employees • replace surveys • substitute for endless meetings By showing successes and failures of real organizations, and identifying the common roadblocks they’ve overcome, Oracles offers a guide to begin testing expertise against the collective wisdom of employees and the market—all to the benefit of their bottom line.

In this volume, Don Thompson explains how firms use prediction markets to make better decisions, describing what could be the origins of a social revolution -- Publisher description.

Predicting the future is serious business for virtually all public and private institutions, for they must often make important decisions based upon such predictions. This text explores how institutions might improve their predictions and arrive at better decisions by means of prediction markets.

How does one effectively aggregate disparate pieces of information that are spread among many different individuals? In other words, how does one best access the ‘wisdom of the crowd’? Prediction markets, which are essentially speculative markets created for the purpose of aggregating information and making predictions, offer the answer to this question. The effective use of these markets has the potential not only to help forecast future events on a national and international level, but also to assist companies, for example, in providing improved estimates of the potential market size for a new product idea or the launch date of new products and services. The markets have already been used to forecast uncertain outcomes ranging from influenza to the spread of infectious diseases, to the demand for hospital services, to the box office success of movies, climate change, vote shares and election outcomes, to the probability of meeting project deadlines. The insights gained also have many potentially valuable applications for public policy more generally. These markets offer substantial promise as a tool of information aggregation as well as forecasting, whether alone or as a supplement to other mechanisms like opinion surveys, group deliberations, panels of experts and focus groups. Moreover, they can be applied at a macroeconomic and microeconomic level to yield information that is valuable for government and commercial policy-makers and which can be used for a number of social purposes. This volume of original readings, contributed by many of the leading experts in the field, marks a significant addition to the base of knowledge about this fascinating subject area. The book should be of interest to anyone looking at monetary economics, economic forecasting and microeconomics.