This is a shameless plea for somebody else to set up some markets, because if I do it I won’t be able to bid on them. :-P

A market for what party will win each state in the 2008 presidential election.

A market for when primary elections will end up happening in each state. (A lot of states are talking about moving their primaries up in the calendar.)

Markets predicting political polling. This would be trickier to do, cause it would require some knowledge of what polls asking what questions will be released when, and by whom. It could be a particular poll, or the average of all polls of a particular type (e.g., Democratic Primaries) by a particular source (e.g., Zogby) over a particular period (e.g., March through June of ‘07. Or something like that.

I guess zakarria was able to find some some suitable markets. How does zakarria do it?

Three proposed ways to deal with the inability to trade in markets you create: (1) Team up unofficially with another trader. He or she posts your suggestions, you post his or hers; (2) Get another account that you use for nothing but creating markets. You do no trading at all with the account; or (3) Inkling creates a category of account that permits only creating markets.

The one problem with all three solutions is the potential for abuse. As someone pointed out before, one advantage in trading is being the first to arrive. Cheating seems to me to be a self-defeating proposition here. You have nothing but your score as a reward so where’s the payoff if your score is not derived honestly. But, heck, I have used “game cheats” in PC games when it seemed impossible to get further. I am not sure if that is the same thing in the Inkling environment. Everything comes with a price.

that’s right cygnus, you have to live with yourself after cheating in inkling and i just don’t know how anyone could do it. :)

It’s not just ethical, it’s efficient. Assume for a moment that you were the market maker in a real money market, so your money was on the line when the payoffs come due. In that case the best you can do is start the market at exactly the price that would make you indifferent.

Otherwise you are giving the first trader who comes along a present.

(The only reason you can give yourself a present with Inklings set up is that they pay out Inklings from the "corporate treasury", and then only if you cheat and use a dummy account.)