Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Markets in Everything: One-to-One Video Chats

The website ExpertInsight.com is now offering one-to-one private video chats with economists, authors, bloggers, investment advisors, sports coaches, and poker players.  The website is featured in this Bloomberg article.    

Some of the fees for a one-hour video chat are:

Nobel economist Gary Becker: $5,000
Economist Steven Levitt: $3,000
Author Steven Dubner: $3,000
Political blogger Nate Silver: $1,000
Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron: $400

HT: Peter Parlapiano

8 Comments:

At 4/20/2011 8:46 AM, Blogger morganovich said...

wall st has been doing this for a good decade through firms like gerson lehrman.

http://www.glgroup.com/

frankly, i have never found it to be of much use. it tends to focus opinion around the views of one expert who may or may not be representative of the space you are looking at and it gives experts a pernicious incentive to "give value for money" by pretending to understand more than they do or giving more definitive answers than are possible.

nobody likes to pay $3k for "well, maybe it will work, it's too soon to tell".

this creates a nasty adverse selection bias for experts in uncertain situations.

it also leads to gropupthink as lots of funds speak to the same couple of guys on say dermatological lasers, and they all wind up with the same info and views. that is not the way to create differentiated alpha.

 
At 4/20/2011 10:59 AM, Blogger Buddy R Pacifico said...

ExpertInsight seems to have a bent towards donating fees received to charity. Founder/CEO Brandon Adams is both an economist and poker coach. For $400 per hour, Adams will poker coach for you and his fee will be donated to the Morris Jeff Community School in New Orleans.

 
At 4/20/2011 10:59 AM, Blogger rjs said...

another idea stolen from the porn industry...

 
At 4/20/2011 11:42 AM, Blogger Benjamin Cole said...

I can't iamgine anyone paying money to listen to any of these guys, when there is so much material for free--research papers etc--on the web.


And we have daily recourse to our own Dr. Perry, who provides his insights for free! What greater wisdom could be had?

 
At 4/20/2011 1:55 PM, Blogger Methinks said...

it also leads to gropupthink as lots of funds speak to the same couple of guys on say dermatological lasers, and they all wind up with the same info and views.

One of my biggest complaints about Wall Street. Sell-side research is defined by it. Hedge funds seem fond of it as they can point to their peers in losing years and claim that they were just crushed by the same forces as everyone else.

 
At 4/21/2011 3:20 AM, Blogger Ron H. said...

"nobody likes to pay $3k for "well, maybe it will work, it's too soon to tell"

Boy, I can imagine!

 
At 4/21/2011 4:08 AM, Blogger Don Culo said...

Is there anyone offering a One-One Video Chat with a hot young woman?

 
At 4/21/2011 6:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don Culo, it's not video, but there's an older invention for that: it's called a strip club. Cost runs from $100-400/hour and they won't bore you with any talking. ;)

 

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