A Parimutuel-Like Mechanism for Information Aggregation: A Field Test Inside Intel

Abstract

We evaluate the performance of an information aggregation mechanism (IAM) implemented inside Intel to forecast unit sales for the company. Developed, refined and tested in the laboratory using experimental methods, the IAM is constructed from institutional features that improve performance and overcome barriers to successful applications of other information aggregation methods. Its implementation at Intel provides a testbed for evaluating this new form of IAM's performance in a complex field environment. In contrast to prediction markets, which provide only a point forecast of future sales, the IAM characterizes the full distribution of participants' aggregated beliefs allowing a more detailed evaluation of its performance. We show this predictive distribution very closely matches the distribution over outcomes at short horizons while slightly underweighting low-probability realizations of unit sales at long horizons.Compared to Intel's "official forecast," the IAM forecasts perform well overall, even though they predate the official forecasts. The forecast improvements are most prominent at short forecast horizons and in direct distribution channels, where the effective aggregation of individually-held information drives the IAM to be more accurate than the official forecast over 75% of the time.

Two information aggregation mechanisms for predicting the opening weekend box office revenues of films: Boxoffice Prophecy and Guess of Guesses

“…The S-shaped distortion in Art House movies is similar to the Reverse Favorite-Longshot Bias observed by Gillen, Plott and Shum (2015) …”

“…The mechanism is closest to that studied in a field implementation forecasting revenue at Intel by Gillen, Plott, and Shum (2015), which presents a general model that heavily influenced the discussion here. This model is used to characterize key features of the BOP's incentives and how they support distributional information aggregation.…”

“…The first field application of the parimutuel IAM was conducted inside Intel Corporation (Gillen, Plott and Shum, 2015). Among the many potential Intel applications those chosen existed in environments considered as good candidates for successes.…”