Find a niche to create a subsidized prediction market
Epistemic Institutions
One of the problems of current forecasting is that it isn’t getting attention from decision-makers. One way to jumpstart this is to create a subsidized market in some well-chosen area that will work well and thus publicly prove and legitimize the use of prediction markets.
Make two subsidized real-money markets on the stock price of each Fortune 500 firm, one market conditional on its CEO stepping down by quarter’s end, and the other conditional on not stepping down. The difference between these two prices would advice the board on dumping the CEO.
If active, these markets should attract business press, and then most of these CEOs would come to see what the markets say about them. Half a million would pay for legal/admin. The other half would only cover a $1000 subsidy per firm, but CEOs trying to manipulate would add lots of liquidity. A few years of data would let us clearly compare the returns of firms following market advice to firms not following. With clear data I’d encourage shareholders to sue boards ignoring market advice, and after a few wins most boards would weigh market advice heavily. A revolution in CEO accountability would then be complete, all for only a million.
One potential niche could be betting markets around outcomes of political events (e.g., betting on outcome metrics such as GDP growth, expected lifespan, GINI coefficient, or carbon emissions; linked to events such as a national election, new regulatory proposals, or the passing of government budgets). Depending on legal restrictions, this market could even ask policy makers or political parties to place bets in these markets, to help the public assess which policy makers have the best epistemics, to hold policy makers accountable, and to incentivize policy makers to invest in better epistemics. (note: this also links to an idea presented in a different comment here -https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KigFfo4TN7jZTcqNH/the-future-fund-s-project-ideas-competition?commentId=zjvCCNuLEToCQyHdn)
Find a niche to create a subsidized prediction market
Epistemic Institutions
One of the problems of current forecasting is that it isn’t getting attention from decision-makers. One way to jumpstart this is to create a subsidized market in some well-chosen area that will work well and thus publicly prove and legitimize the use of prediction markets.
One suitable idea is Robin Hanson’s idea with fire-CEO market:
One potential niche could be betting markets around outcomes of political events (e.g., betting on outcome metrics such as GDP growth, expected lifespan, GINI coefficient, or carbon emissions; linked to events such as a national election, new regulatory proposals, or the passing of government budgets). Depending on legal restrictions, this market could even ask policy makers or political parties to place bets in these markets, to help the public assess which policy makers have the best epistemics, to hold policy makers accountable, and to incentivize policy makers to invest in better epistemics. (note: this also links to an idea presented in a different comment here -https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KigFfo4TN7jZTcqNH/the-future-fund-s-project-ideas-competition?commentId=zjvCCNuLEToCQyHdn)