Prediction Markets for Promoting the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: The U.S. Constitution authorizes federal lawmakers [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. In pursuit of that good, lawmakers have created federal copyrights and patents. But those intellectual properties for the most part stimulate only superficial research in, and development of, the sciences and useful arts; copyrights and patents largely fail to inspire fundamental progress. We thus face an undersupply of basic and useful ideas, principles, systems, concepts, discoveries, and facts. Fortunately, we might cure that failure with a new type of market: an in skilled predictions about the sciences and useful arts. Unfortunately, state and federal laws threaten any such exchange—here called a prediction exchange or SPEx—with potential bans and fines. This article discusses the benefits of scientific prediction exchanges and how to reduce the legal costs, qua legal risks, of setting up, running, or trading on such markets.
Author: Tom W. Bell
Institution: Chapman University
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3121415603