Friday, January 25, 2008

Wanna Buy an Election?

From one of Tyler Cowen's readers comes this:
What would happen if some famous rich person walked into a presidental prediction market and said: "Hello, I'm selling shorts for candidate A, to the value of a hundred million dollars if he should win. I'm not doing this because I don't believe candidate A will win, indeed, I want her to win. I hope everyone who can help candidate A win, by campaigning, talking to friends, or even just voting, will buy a short from me (I'm practically giving them away!) and go out and do it with a healthy economic self-interest in their hearts!"

Cowen thinks that there's regulatory restraint on this. I'm not so sure.

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