IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cje/issued/v28y1995i4ap770-93.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using Market Prices to Predict Election Results: The 1993 UBC Election Stock Market

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Forsythe
  • Murray Frank
  • V. Krishnamurthy
  • Thomas W. Ross

Abstract

Economists believe that markets are exceptionally efficient aggregators of information. This research tests this theory by asking whether markets can successfully predict uncertain outcomes. Specifically, the UBC Election Stock Market (UBC-ESM) was created to see if market prices could be accurate predictors of the outcome of the 1993 Canadian federal election. This paper presents the results of this experiment in which over 250 traders from across Canada and the United States participated, investing over $30,000. The structure and workings of the market are explained in some detail and the performance of the market is reviewed. The market predicted the popular vote shares of the major parties very well, but did less well at predicting the split of seats between the Liberal and Conservative parties. Coauthors are Murray Frank, Vasu Krishnamurthy, and Thomas W. Ross.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Forsythe & Murray Frank & V. Krishnamurthy & Thomas W. Ross, 1995. "Using Market Prices to Predict Election Results: The 1993 UBC Election Stock Market," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 28(4a), pages 770-793, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:28:y:1995:i:4a:p:770-93
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Forsythe, Robert & Rietz, Thomas A. & Ross, Thomas W., 1999. "Wishes, expectations and actions: a survey on price formation in election stock markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 83-110, May.
    2. Werner Antweiler, 2012. "Long-Term Prediction Markets," Journal of Prediction Markets, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 6(3), pages 43-61.
    3. Robert Hudson & Kevin Keasey & Mike Dempsey, 1998. "Share prices under Tory and Labour governments in the UK since 1945," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(4), pages 389-400.
    4. Jay Simon & Donald Saari & Donald Saari, 2020. "Interdependent Altruistic Preference Models," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 17(3), pages 189-207, September.
    5. Mongrain, Philippe & Nadeau, Richard & Jérôme, Bruno, 2021. "Playing the synthesizer with Canadian data: Adding polls to a structural forecasting model," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 289-301.
    6. Berlemann, Michael, 2001. "Forecasting inflation via electronic markets: Results from a prototype market," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 06/01, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    7. Auld, T., 2022. "Betting and financial markets are cointegrated on election night," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2263, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    8. Auld, T., 2022. "Political markets as equity price factors," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2264, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    9. Berlemann, Michael & Schmidt, Carsten, 2001. "Predictive accuracy of political stock markets: Empirical evidence from an European perspective," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 05/01, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:28:y:1995:i:4a:p:770-93. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Prof. Werner Antweiler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.