Re:I Win My European Unemployment Bet
by smsm42 on Friday March 08, 2019 @01:52PM
(#19340811)
If you can correctly predict economic developments for 10 years on a world scale, I think you'd be entitled to sound a little smug too. I've read a lot of economists much more smug that utterly failed to predict something right under their noses, and still are regarded as respected and asked for more prediction. I'd rather take one that can predict stuff, smug or not.
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But we exist in the world where he was right - the article doesn't point to any methodology. It was 50/50.
That reminds me of a joke - what's the probability of meeting of a dinosaur in the street? 50% - either I meet him, or I don't!
Not every event with two outcomes is 50/50, you know :) And the article does point to both the subject of the bet - unemployment indexes, which are known to all participants and it's kinda the job of the economist to know what they mean - and why Caplan thought he would win. It may be, of course, that he won randomly and his theory is still wrong - but in general people that successfully predict real world outcomes are regarded better in most scientific endeavors than people that predict wrongly.
Re:I Win My European Unemployment Bet
by ThrowawayR2 on Friday March 08, 2019 @02:27PM
(#19341255)
> It was 50/50.
1) The fact that there are two possible outcomes does not make the odds 50/50.
2) As others have pointed out, he has a history of winning the bets he makes, well above 50/50.
Considering that he's won 19 of these bets, he'd have to be a very, very lucky person if it was just a 50-50 bet.
Re:I Win My European Unemployment Bet
by TheCoelacanth on Friday March 08, 2019 @09:22PM
(#19344066)
They aren't all independent 50/50 bets. There are a few clear trends in the wagers (bullish on the US economy, Eurozone/EU will not completely go to shit), so predicting just a few trends correctly wins most of the bets (though being wrong on those same things would lose most bets) and there are some bets at very long odds (e.g. 200:1 odds on Ron Paul becoming president) so even the person on the other side of the bet doesn't think it's a likely outcome.