News Releases

Conference on Corporate Applications of Prediction/Information Markets

Jim Lavoie, Co-founder and CEO, Rite-Solutions, will be the keynote speaker.

Koleman Strumpf, Koch Professor of Economics

Koleman Strumpf, Koch Professor of Economics

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

By Monica Lemmons

Jim Lavoie, Co-founder and CEO, Rite-Solutions, will be the keynote speaker at the first conference on Corporate Applications of Prediction/Information Markets, Thursday, November 1st. Koleman Strumpf, Koch Professor of Economics, organized the event and it is sponsored by The University of Kansas School of Business, the KU Center for Applied Economics and the Kauffman Foundation.

The conference will bring together leading experts from the academic and corporate world. Through a number of sessions, they will discuss their experiences at organizing and running prediction markets. Fifteen speakers will participate in the day-long conference.

"Prediction markets are a tool for harnessing the wisdom of crowds. They have been used to accurately forecast election results for several decades," said Strumpf on the conference web site. "Recently, firms have begun to use these markets to leverage the information dispersed among their employees and customers. The markets have been used to improve forecasts of uncertain events, to generate new ideas, and to improve resource allocation within the firm. Prediction markets have great promise for helping firms manage risk, because they can provide more precise estimates of events which are both internal and external to the firm."

The free-to-the-public conference will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and will be held at the Kauffman Foundation Conference Center in Kansas City, Missouri. For more information, visit the conference web site.


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