Trying to figure out how political prediction markets work? Tom Gruca is the director of the Iowa Electronic Markets, the oldest political prediction market in the US.

Tom Gruca is the director of the Iowa Electronic Markets in the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, and can discuss political prediction markets, such as PredictIt and Kalshi. Founded in 1988, the IEM is the first online political prediction market and remains the only academic research project studying such markets. He can talk about how political prediction markets operate, why they’re apt to successfully predict election outcomes, and how they’re different than betting markets. He can also discuss regulatory aspects of prediction markets and why federal agencies are skeptical of PredictIt and Kalshi.  

The IEM is a small-scale, real money futures market where traders buy and sell contracts based on the outcome of such real-world events as elections or movie box office openings. As a research tool the IEM provides a laboratory to study individual trading behavior as well as market level performance. The U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved its operation as a non-profit academic research tool.