Academic

Economists love prediction markets and, perhaps not totally relatedly, are often put in charge of Latin American countries.  But political prediction markets gave Clinton an 8% chance of winning in New Hampshire and pegged the GOP's chance at holding on to the Senate in 2006 at 85% three hours after the polls had closed.  Why are they often wrong?  And why did Anil Hara claim that there's no evidence that economists lead countries successfully?

Troubling questions, I suppose.  But luckily, economists have their defenders.  Here's Cass Sunstein, a law professor, on why prediction markets actually do work (the takeaway is "sure they are sometimes wrong, but sometimes they are not") and Daniel Drezner, a political scientist, on why it is possible that economists are effective leaders (the takeaway is "correlation isn't the same thing as causation").