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Prescient traders stand to earn millions.
A new study, conducted by scientists at NEC Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, and the Technical University of Denmark, finds that play-money markets like HSX can also yield surprisingly good predictions. So an Oscar nominee's price on HSX today really does reflect his or her chances of taking home a gold statuette on March 25. One of the benefits of markets is their ability to combine information from various sources and make that information available to the public via prices. Another advantage of game markets is that they're relatively easy to set up, especially on the Web, without worrying about all the regulatory and legal hurdles of establishing a real market. A brief description of their results appears in the journal Science.