Getting Grilled by MBA Students

I had the pleasure today to present at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management in Professor Marco Ottaviani's class on Strategy and Organization. Readers of our blog who are also hardcore prediction market aficionados may recognize Professor Ottaviani's name. He published, along with many other prominent economists, an article in the journal Science called "The Promise of Prediction Markets."

Speaking in his class I was once again reminded of a phenomena I often experience when presenting to MBA classes: questions overall are probing and insightful, but without fail the first question I always receive is about market manipulation, the possibility of collusion, or project managers hijacking their own projects to increase the value of their own long or short positions. I wonder why this is? Why are the initial questions not more positive? Do students automatically try to "go for the jugular" of their guest speaker? :)