Finance Roundtable

As more prediction market enthusiasts in the U.S. reconcile themselves with eventual CFTC regulation, the Poker Players Alliance is making a bid to join the ranks of the privileged exemptions to UIGEA. Prediction markets have simply not been profitable enough to support a national lobby ...

In the wake of the Neteller arrests this week, alternate currencies are unfortunately a bit less interesting. While the DOJ has not yet moved against gambling in virtual worlds such as Second Life, it is only a matter of time now. When the UIGEA ...

There is some excitement around Yahoo's planned "Yootles" currency and group decision-making mechanism. Near the end of the above paper, one sees that the initial interest rate for Yootles will be set ...

Leslie Fine's announcement that HP had signed with Pfizer to deploy an "information gathering tool" could mark a turn for corporate prediction market consultants, regardless of nomenclature. Pfizer had enough internal resources to build their own prediction markets, and ran them for about a year. As Leslie tells ...

This month continues to see consensus build that "prediction markets" ought to be regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It is quite possible that the CFTC will approve CME's Credit Event Futures on Wednesday, signaling the legal way ahead for other "event futures" in the US.

Now that the CFTC has effectively begun regulating event derivatives, what obstacles might lie in the way of a DCM-hosted election market? Is there now greater ambiguity between futures trading and legal gambling? After all, couldn't a game of roulette be described as an event option? (I see ...

I am very pleased to announce the world's first explicit tax futures on Intrade. I thank John Delaney and everyone there for their help and enthusiasm in getting these off the ground.

The contracts will forecast the highest marginal single-filer federal tax rates for ...

The essential purpose here is to advance the ideas of public policy markets and tax futures. To this end, we can once again show that such markets help to address well-known problems that arise in government.

Consider the typical "special interest" problem as described in public choice economics. ...

The libertarian paradox whereby free markets spur wealth creation which in turn supports the growth of the state suggests a potential issue with tax futures. Tax futures are hedging markets that predict future tax rates and could trade alongside more specific policy event derivatives. ...

In February, I appeared on BNN, Canada's business channel, to discuss the tax futures that had recently launched on Intrade.

One clarification: after some more careful research, the predominant factor test technically does not hold in New York State, although small-ante gambling participants are rarely prosecuted.