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Prof. Sumner,

Has anyone tried to encourage the people behind Polymarket to create a giant, highly-liquid NGDP futures market? If not, are there any likelier potential candidates out there? Couldn't Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok, Yglesias, or Noah Smith get someone's attention in order to do that?

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I don't think there'd be much interest in trading the contract.

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That's true right now and that's too bad.

But we do have agency (albeit limited) in this situation. And Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok, Yglesias, or Noah Smith might have even more influence!

Don't. Stop. Thinkin' About Tomorrow.......

:)

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Polymarket smart contracts were hacked twice, and you want those programmers (all of whom are subpar) to build the smart contracts for a futures market? lol.

Every programmer has already thought of a futures market, but it's a lot more complicated than a simple prediction market. And no entreprenuer is going to build one for just NGDP fans, which is fewer than 10,000 worldwide.

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I agree. The best solution would not be a conventional prediction market, it would be a Fed commitment to takes NGDP futures positions in support of its policy target. (Say defending NGDP growth in the 3% to 5% range.)

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On YglesiasтАЩs blog (or was it Noah SmithтАЩs) an economist smarter than me with decades of experience wrote the following:

тАЬThe US Treasury coud just issue a 5 and 10 year Trillionth of the NGDP security and sell itтАЭ

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I think I first heard that from Sumner. But not recently.

Of course that is an instrument. The instrument does not determine the target and I still have not seen a point by point comparison of why Sumner or any other NGDP targeting person prefers that over FAIT.

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