Harvard Business School publishes case study on prediction market platform Kalshi
Harvard Business School published a case study titled 'Tomorrow: Kalshi and the Future of Prediction Markets.' The study covers Kalshi, founded in 2018 by MIT classmates Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara. The New York-based company operates an online prediction platform that allows users to place trades on future events. Mansour appeared on podcasts with Reuters and Reason Magazine around the same time to discuss prediction market regulation and whether ordinary traders can outperform Wall Street.
The HBS case study turns Kalshi from a regulatory combatant into a classroom case study, which shapes how the next generation of executives and policymakers frame prediction markets. That academic legitimacy matters while Kalshi fights state attorneys general in Utah, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee, and faces a Sixth Circuit rehearing battle with the NFL as amicus. When judges and legislators encounter prediction markets, they increasingly rely on frameworks forged in business school curricula.
A sympathetic HBS narrative gives Kalshi a persuasive asset beyond legal briefs. The timing is notable: Mansour's podcast tour amplifies the case study's reach just as the CFTC's pending swap-rule proposal sits in White House review and state courts move faster than federal regulators. If Harvard's framing becomes the default mental model for prediction markets, Kalshi gains argumentative altitude in every venue that matters.
Kalshi joins a widening prediction-markets battlefield that now spans state attorneys general in Utah and Missouri, a CFTC swap-rule proposal in White House review, a Sixth Circuit rehearing with the NFL as amicus, and a Novig celebrity-marketing experiment that tested rival acquisition economics.