This betting victory brings my record to 19 wins, 0 losses

From I Win My European Unemployment Bet by Bryan Caplan. Echoes of the Simon-Ehrlich wager.

In 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate exceeded Europe’s for the first time in decades. Apologists for European labor market regulation rejoiced, so I publicly bet that European unemployment would exceed U.S. unemployment over the next decade. The original authors I targeted turned me down, even after I offered a 1 percentage-point spread. But noted economist John Quiggin took the bait. Our final terms:

The stake is $US100 and the agreed criterion is that, for Bryan to win, the average Eurostat harmonised unemployment rate for the EU-15 over the period 2009-18 inclusive should exceed that for the US by at least 1.5 percentage points.

Ten years later, the bet’s results are now in. The average U.S. unemployment rate during this decade was 6.8%. The EU-19 (the original EU-15 plus the Baltics and Slovakia) was 10.3%. Since the EU-15 is no longer widely available, Quiggin would have been within his rights to hold out for slightly adjusted numbers, but via email he has nobly decided to concede. Since the Baltics and Slovakia have low populations, they couldn’t sway the final figure much – and in any case, unemployment rates for the Baltics and Slovakia aren’t major outliers. The upshot is that I won the European unemployment bet by an enormous margin of 2 full percentage-points (on top of the original 1.5 percentage-point edge). And remember: The U.S. had higher unemployment than Europe when the bet began.

What does this all mean? To me, this bet is just a small extra piece of evidence in favor of the orthodox and blindingly obvious theory that Europe has higher unemployment than the U.S. because it has stricter labor market regulation. Flexible labor markets respond more sharply to shocks, but yield lower unemployment rates overall.

Fair enough. A good point.

There is something later in the article though -

By my count, this betting victory brings my record to 19 wins, 0 losses. Yes, perhaps I’ll see my first defeat later this month. But even if I do, I’m not afraid to repeat that I have publicly demonstrated that my judgment is good. And in my demonstrably good judgment, radical deregulation of Europe’s labor markets is long overdue. I’m happy to make the Quiggin bet all over again with anyone who’s interested, but what’s the point? My homeschooled sons understood all of this when they were 12. Forget ideology. Let’s all join hands, admit that labor market regulation is a scourge, and tear down these paper walls.

Yes.

Someone on twitter observed that this is an example of the base rate fallacy in action. Good point.

Betting against the philosophically/ideology motivated could be a good money earner.