Grass Root Bureaucrats: How Prediction Markets Can Incentivize Citizens to Fill Esa Data Gaps

Prediction markets,1 which allow participants to place bets on the probability of a particular event, have been used with great success in the election context. Virtually ubiquitous during the 2008 election, prediction markets were used to forecast the chances of a particular candidate winning the election, and were often used by Internet pundits to keep “score” of the polls throughout the run-up to November 4th.2 Though the markets do not facilitate a formal, top-down style of information collection, the final election predictions still turned out to be quite accurate.3 Thus, prediction markets are clearly a valuable tool in the American electoral context. But do prediction markets have value