Monday, October 12, 2009

Prediction Markets Again Utterly Fail To Predict Econ Nobel

I made a lot of predictions about the Econ Nobel (noticed Williamson and said environmental, which Ostrom is, at least partly). However, one I made was that once again the prediction markets for the Econ Nobel would fail, and they have, spectacularly.

Ladbroke's had Fama as top at 2 to 1, followed by Paul Romer at 4 to 1, and Fehr, French, and Barro at 6 to 1. Williamson and Ostrom were both far down the list at 50 to 1.

The Harvard betting pool had as their tops in order: Jean Tirole, John Taylor, Paul Milgrom, and Martin Weitzman (who I said was likely, and was also in the top ten at Ladbroke's, as was Tirole).

Thomson Reuters had their tops as Ernst Fehr, Matthew Rabin (also in top ten of Ladbroke's) and William Nordhaus, also sort of on my list.

others mentioned in a Real Time Economics post included Christopher Sims, Richard Thaler, Oliver Hart, Halbert White, Thomas Sargent, Lars Hansen, and Peter Diamond. Neither of the actual winners anywhere in sight.

3 comments:

Shag from Brookline said...

Were any women named specifically on these prediction lists? If not, what does that suggest?

M.G. said...

Please read the original post about the same...
At: http://mgiannini.blogspot.com/2009/10/nobel-prize-in-economic-sciences.html

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Shag,

The woman who has tended to be somewhat higher in the forecasts has been Anne Krueger, who coined the term "rent seeking." Many think that she might get it in conjunction with Gordon Tullock with possibly a third.

Over on the nauseating jobmarketrumor blog, the name of Nancy Stokey was being thrown around as worthier than Ostrom, although Stokey was probably not as high as Krueger. Lots of grad students are forced to read papers she coauthored with Lucas in grad macro theory classes, so they have heard of her. However, as far as I am concerned, her stuff is not all that interesting.