2026-04-14 00:13:10
1. AI adoption gaps for Europe.
2. Books are plunging as a share of political science citations.
3. Gender integration in the military did not hurt male performance.
4. MIE: auctioning off part of the Eiffel Tower (NYT).
5. Agentic AI for economists, slides. And talk.
The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-04-13 19:15:12
The Guardian has an interesting article on prediction markets. There are the usual worries about betting on death, as if insurance markets don’t already exist and about insider trading, which public markets have long dealt with. But there is also interesting material on who decides what happened when resolving bets about events made in language (as opposed to more objectively verified numbers).
On Monday, anonymous user “Harshad” asked in a Discord channel if there was “any chance” that he could still win his bet about whether US forces would enter Iran by the end of April. His money was on “no”.
But Polymarket appeared to be resolving the market to “yes”, after the US conducted an operation to rescue a crew member shot down on a mission over Isfahan over the weekend.
…At the moment, when there is a dispute, markets on Polymarket are settled by an anonymous group of people who hold a crypto token called UMA.
It’s an unusual way to decide what has happened. Some longtime users suggest it opens the platform to corruption. Different individuals hold different amounts of UMA, and therefore have different voting power.
It isn’t known who the largest UMA holders are, or what might affect how they vote. It is entirely possible that the people who finally settle a bet on UMA have large amounts of money staked on it.
There was also this bit about Prediction Hunt (I am an advisor) which is focused on cross-market arbitrage opportunities:
“I love to gamble,” said Joseph Francia.
Now in his early 30s, Francia counted cards in casinos while studying economics at Berkeley, and spent weekends in Reno, Nevada, playing blackjack. He’s not a thrill-seeking “Yolo” (you only live once) gambler, he said: he likes to bet when he has an edge on the house.
At university, he and a friend decided to collect data from a number of offshore sportsbooks, and start placing arbitrage bets: playing on the discrepancies in odds given by different betting sites.
“If the odds on the Lakers are really good on one site, and the odds on the Pacers are really good on another site, you could bet on basically both teams on different sportsbooks and make guaranteed profit,” he said.
That project was a student lark in 2017. But in 2025, he remembered it when he was suddenly laid off from his full-time job, just as prediction markets were taking off.
“I’m a spiritual, religious person,” he said. “The more secular people would say, this opportunity is coincidence. But in my head, I was like, this is a sign of something to some extent. Let me lean into this.”
So Francia started Prediction Hunt, a Discord channel and online community where thousands of people gather to trade tips and ideas for how to make money – and bet smart – on Polymarket. The Guardian spent roughly three weeks in this Discord channel.
There are alerts to track “fade” bets, where you try to follow the smart money: profitable wallets were betting “yes” on the Iranian regime falling by 30 April, for example, while unprofitable wallets were betting “no”.
There are alerts to track potential insiders, so you can copy their bets: one of these appears to have an inside line on interest rate decisions by the US Federal Reserve.
Getting these details right will be important but overall I am pleased that the news now regularly reports prediction market data when reporting stories–this is disciplining news from noise, something I predicted long ago in Entrepreneurial Economics.
The post Prediction Market Details appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-04-13 15:20:25
An edited transcript is here.
The post My South Africa dialogue with Ann Bernstein appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-04-13 12:51:26
Following my post on cross-country driving, a reader asked me about this prospect but I suppose I am skeptical.
First, self-driving vehicles make it too easy to read a book or stare at your phone. Driving yourself fixes your attention on what is unfolding before your eyes, and forces you to keep it there. You might be bored for an hour, but you will catch periodic gems by always looking at the road before you and to the side.
Second, at least for a while self-driving vehicles will not be allowed to exceed speed limits. Good luck with that. A lot of America is marked at 25 mph when you can go 36 mph or maybe even 37 mph in a responsible manner.
Third, many of the best moments in cross-country driving come from the unexpected swerve — “hey, that looks interesting!” And half of the time it is not. Will the self-driving vehicle know when you might wish to swerve and pull over?
Fourth, there is something to be said for integrating the rhythms of your body with those of the car. When you drive yourself, you feel the trip in a way the Waymo does not give you. I would stress this point is a negative for most car trips, though perhaps not for a cross-country drive. If you do not enjoy driving through the USA, maybe do not do the cross-country thing at all? Walking through Paris or Istanbul remains a lovely alternative.
Automation and better AI might eventually solve or address some of those problems. But the next available round of self-driving vehicles probably will not.
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2026-04-13 05:47:37
And that is in Hungary, which does not have much of a democratic tradition. People who suggest that democracy seriously is in danger in the United States need to rethink their world views (this claim however is slightly exaggerated). The problem instead is that democracy does not always bring you desired results…
The post Orbán concedes appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-04-13 01:45:48
At Harvard Law School, Jonathan is consistently excellent.
The post My dialogue with Jonathan Zittrain appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.