What Prediction Markets Can See: Market Formation, Settlement Legibility, and the Geography of Tradable Uncertainty in Africa and Latin America (opens in new tab)

Prediction markets are usually evaluated after their contracts exist, by asking how well prices forecast outcomes. We study the prior institutional margin of market formation, asking which uncertainties become tradable contracts at all. Using an audited dataset of 6,047 Africa-topic and Latin America-topic contracts listed on Polymarket and Kalshi, we construct a coded measure of settlement legibility, the degree to which an uncertainty can be w...