Calling all Geeks…

I need your help!

I want to run a project around the selection of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. I would like to, as an experiment in crowd decision making, set-up a prediction exchange market on the appointment of Rowan’s successor. The problem is, I can’t find any suitable free software.

For those who don’t know what a prediction market is, here’s the spiel.

Prediction markets (also known as predictive markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures, event derivatives, or virtual markets) are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. The current market prices can then be interpreted as predictions of the probability of the event or the expected value of the parameter. For example, a prediction market security might reward a dollar if a particular candidate is elected, such that an individual who thinks the candidate had a 70% chance of being elected should be willing to pay up to 70 cents for such a security.

People who buy low and sell high are rewarded for improving the market prediction, while those who buy high and sell low are punished for degrading the market prediction. Evidence so far suggests that prediction markets are at least as accurate as other institutions predicting the same events with a similar pool of participants.^[1]

The purpose of setting up such a market is not to apply undue pressure or speculation, but rather to engage in an academic exercise to see whether the crowd can anticipate the CNC’s decision making processes.

What I need to do this is either an open source prediction market, betting exchange or ideally an open-source stock market software solution. Ideally it would be PHP / MySQL based software. Of course, if someone who has commercial software that does this wants to be really generous then let me know!

If you’re able to help, please contact me here. Feel free to ask questions below.