The new Hypermind NGDP futures market By Scott Sumner

I am pleased to announce that a new Hypermind NGDP market is up and running. Back in 2015, we ran an annual NGDP prediction market and 4 quarterly markets. Because only the annual forecast has much macroeconomic significance, this time around we are only running that one market. Traders will forecast the NGDP growth rate from 2017 Q1 to 2018 Q1.

Last time we had about $5000 in prize money for the annual market, and that is what we are starting off with this time. However I expect the prize money to rise dramatically before the contract expires, as we are involved in a major fundraising operation. If you want to contribute, there is information over at my post at TheMoneyIllusion:

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=32484

Emile Servan-Schreiber at Hypermind has provided me with some useful information for those who want to participate in the Hypermind NGDP market, or just watch the action:

To follow the market’s prediction in real time, go here: https://hypermind.com/dash/ngdp/dash.html (Note that the initial price in the history chart is all wrong, but that will matter less and less as time goes on.) To participate, one just needs to register to Hypermind at http://www.hypermind.com

And finally, a quick review of my current views on NGDP futures:

1. This is not a policy market. For policy, I propose 3% and 5% “guardrails”, where the central bank promises to buy unlimited NGDP futures at 3% growth and sell unlimited futures at 5% growth. That policy does not even require the creation of an NGDP prediction market; the central bank can create the contracts.

2. In addition to the guardrails policy, I favor the creation of a permanent NGDP prediction market that delivers point estimates of NGDP expectations for policy research purposes. This experiment is thus closer to the research market that I favor, not the NGDP guardrails policy market, which is run by the central bank.