The intrade presidential market seems to me to have proved itself to be smarter than me. Also perhaps Mankiw (although I intuit he got lucky while performing one of his standard McCain alignments -still can't argue with the outcomes).
About 1 week before Obama's electoral college advantage vanished intrade shifted from 60/40 Obama to about 50/50. McCain recently has a slight EC edge, and Intrade's been reflecting that too -it did IN ADVANCE.
This may be a powerful personal demonstration of the superior intelligence of markets that meet a certain threshhold standard of traits.
The performance is a marked contrast to the republican Veep market.
The 1 week in advance accuracy reminds me of weather prediction. I wonder if this will hold a while as a level of prescience for the intrade presidential market and similar predictive markets.
Some differences between pres election market and gop veep market:
Number of options. It's just Obama vs McCain.
Determining factors. Number of votes in different states vs one guy's decision, admittedly with lots of advisors.
Perhaps Intrade functions better for markets with one set of the traits mentioned above than the other.
Posted by: TGGP | September 17, 2008 at 07:25 PM