NYT article by Lydia DePhillis, February 11, 2026

This article really caught my eye as neat form of crowdsourcing. As Ms. DePhillis wrote, “Over the five years that Kalshi has existed, its thousands of gamblers have proved as accurate on average at predicting certain economic indicators as the highly trained forecasters, a working paper published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research found. The crowd is also pretty good at predicting interest rate decisions from the Federal Reserve, and even better than the professionals at predicting the rate of inflation.”

Why? Perhaps as the article states: Theis Jensen, a Yale professor … thinks the comparatively good performance by thousands of amateurs can be chalked up to incentives. Professional analysts may have conflicts of interest, such as their firm’s trading commissions, which might rise in response to rosier forecasts. Analysts may also avoid publishing earnings forecasts that are out of the norm, which can lead to more embarrassment than sticking with the crowd.

“The nice thing about prediction markets is that you have to put your money where your mouth is,” Mr. Jensen said, “and so that highly incentivizes you to state your true beliefs.”