The Economist looks at research into information markets that have been used to been used to forecast almost everything from the fate of Saddam Hussein to the outcome of celebrity trials and the box-office takings of films on their opening weekends.

tudies over a 20-year period have amassed a wealth of evidence that under the right circumstances, carefully designed markets can be among the most effective prediction tools.

A U.S. government betting pool for future terrorism events is gone, but predictive markets are here to stay.

Plans to set up a stock market for tip-offs about terrorism have been shelved by the US Government. But that won't stop someone else setting it up - and may not even stop Osama bin Laden being able to make cash out of betting on his own whereabouts.

Noah defends the idea of creating a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes. The U.S. considered the idea briefly but abandoned it for political reasons.

Researchers are developing software that employs the basic trading infrastructure of Wall Street to create information markets that trade shares in unusual commodities such as political candidates or box office receipts. The article discusses the possibilities of using these information markets for reforming the intelligence community.

The author looks at several new web sites that attempt to establish virtual futures markets that trade securities based on the outcomes of current events.

The New York Times reports on the growing number of "decision markets" that allow users to buy and sell stocks that represent their faith in ideas or factual statements such as "a human will be cloned before 2005" or "Bush will lose the 2004 Presidential election."