For years, prediction markets have forecast elections with eerie accuracy. Now, they’re coming soon to a policy near you.
Want to know who the next U.S. president will be? Forget the daily barrage of polls: For 20 years, an online project run out of the University of Iowa has predicted the winner of presidential elections more [...]

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Traditionally, analysts have cautioned that Chinese growth figures should be greeted with skepticism, but according to one school of economic thought, there may be something to the idea that the quake served as a brutal stimulus. In fact, some economists argue that despite the widespread destruction they leave behind, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions and [...]

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At about $124 a barrel, the price of crude oil has more than doubled since the start of 2007. The vast majority of government forecasters, stock analysts, economists, traders, and journalists who follow oil failed to see it coming. Even now their price estimates for the next several years are all over the place, ranging [...]

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Now, however, people in international financial circles detect a subtle shifting of the ground in confidence about the dollar. A few years ago, the suggestion that another currency could rival the dollar would have been ridiculed. Today, some economists say the dollar could begin surrendering some of the advantages of dominance to the euro [...]

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