Rajiv Sethi

The Detection of Wash Trading Consider the following set of trades executed in quick succession on Polymarket at around 6pm on November 1, just a couple of days before polls opened on election day:

New post on the detection of wash trading:
open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

Accessible to all! ...my paper in Journal of Econ Perspectives on World Bank's 1993 East Asian "Miracle" report ("Too Much A Product of Its TIme?") (www.aeaweb.org/full_issue.p...). @cgdev.org @mclem.org @arvind2011.bsky.social @justsand.bsky.social

Not dunking on anyone here, just pointing out that one can't reason one's way to an answer to the accuracy question! Only data can answer.

The question of prediction market accuracy relative to other forecasting mechanisms such as statistical models can't be settled by logic, only by looking at historical performance across a range of events, some attempt to do so for elections here:

share.google/pEO6jR9PTwnP...

Direct link to paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Have been waiting for this paper to come out ever since Hongyao told me about it -- more academics should be taking advantage of such open data to answer important questions

Coverage of the paper by @ellebeyoud.bsky.social of Bloomberg here (gift link):

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Just posted a paper on the detection of wash trading with an application to Polymarket (joint with Allen Sirolly, Hongyao Ma, Yash Kanoria):

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Markets and the Mayor's Race We’re just a few days away from discovering who will be the next mayor of New York City, but according to at least one major prediction market, it’s essentially a foregone conclusion:

New post on prediction markets and the New York City mayor's race: open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

The Compact According to media reports, the federal government has sent nine research universities a memorandum of understanding and promised significant benefits—including preferential access to grants and feder...

"What appeals to me most abt American traditions is the creedal nature of national identity, the Declaration’s insistence on universal equality…the rights enumerated in our Constitution…I consider innovation…growth…sustained material prosperity…downstream of free expression." @rajivsethi.bsky.social

The Compact According to media reports, the federal government has sent nine research universities a memorandum of understanding and promised significant benefits—including preferential access to grants and contr...

New post on the compact open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

CASBS's Creating a New Moral Political Economy program (2020-23) offers an open access repository allowing students & educators to expand their thinking about moral political economy issues & questions.

Scholars: add your syllabus & other digital resources to the repository.

👉 mpe.stanford.edu

Gun Supply A recent issue of Vital City is on the supply side of America’s gun problem.

New post on gun supply open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

Vital City | When Products Can Kill The unfortunate limits of legal gun regulation

Latest issue of @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social is on gun supply, lots of interesting contributions, here is mine (with Dan O'Flaherty) www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/whe...

Check out Interactive Economics, an open access project co-directed by CASBS fellow @rajivsethi.bsky.social & devoted to learning economics & the dynamics of interactions among people, resources & the environment. Four modules released & more coming soon

Play with it 👉 www.interactiveeconomics.org

CASBS fellow @rajivsethi.bsky.social has a terrific Substack called Imperfect Information

In this post, Rajiv describes his CASBS year project on how messages & signals we send & receive become adopted or contested, & their sometimes unintended consequences

Check it out & read more Rajiv posts ⬇️

Topical in a couple of different ways, but also points out a major failure point of our collective information processing systems: we infer from financial metrics much more than what their generative process warrants.

Much like omens in other cultures... 1/

Celebrity Unions and Price Volatility When Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce announced their engagement on Instagram a couple of days ago, it was 1pm on the East Coast and the price of a contract referencing the event was trading at around 40...

New post on celebrity unions, papal conclaves, and financial markets
open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

The Interpretation of Signals One of the themes that I have explored from time to time in this newsletter is the interpretation of signals.

New post on the coming academic year and an ongoing project open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

Instead of regurgitating the bromide that LLMs are just "autocomplete on steroids" (even by people who know better), maybe we can actually engage in some public education. The problem with genAI is better expressed through a classic computer science concept, known as SYMBOL GROUNDING. 🧵

Merit, Mission, and a Memorandum A presidential memorandum issued on August 7 asserts the following:

New post on a presidential memorandum open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

Call for Papers: 20th Annual Conference on Economic Growth and Development

www.isid.ac.in/~acegd/acegd...

It's a great conference, I'm on the program committee and hoping to attend this year

The Columbia Deal On July 23rd, Columbia University signed an agreement with the federal government that covers a broad range of issues including hiring and admissions practices, disciplinary procedures, curricular ove...

New post on the Columbia deal:
open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

Guns + Violence Jens Ludwig is a founder and director of the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago and the author of a recent book Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence. He appeared a c...

New post on the work of Jens Ludwig on gun violence open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

I made a quick Russian interference explainer. When CIA director Ratcliffe started down this road, I wrote 3000 words about the Senate reports, the data sets from big tech, etc.

Now Tulsi’s doing her thing…so here’s a quick video about her “Obama treason” voting machine claims vs reality. 🤷🏻‍♀️

A Second Act for PredictIt PredictIt was the most active and widely referenced political prediction market in the United States for the seven years following its launch in 2015.

Follow up post on this open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

A Second Act for PredictIt PredictIt was the most active and widely referenced political prediction market in the United States for the seven years following its launch in 2015.

New post on a second act for PredictIt: open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...

PredictIt Says It Can Expand Political Trades Under CFTC Deal PredictIt, one of the original US politics-betting platforms, said it reached a new agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to allow it expand its operations.

New deal between PredictIt and the CFTC drops restrictions on total number of traders and raises cap to $3.5K per trader in any given market (up from $850); it will be interesting to see implications for forecasting accuracy:

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Professional Distancing in Academia When scholars are targeted for speech acts, what happens to their productivity and influence?

New post on professional distancing in academia (based recent work by Kris Gulati and Lorenzo Palladini): open.substack.com/pub/rajivset...