IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2610.23517.html

Combinatorial Arbitrage in Prediction Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Hongjian Shi
  • Daojing Zhai

Abstract

We develop a framework to identify and quantify arbitrage across logically related prediction-market contracts. We prove that prices outside the convex hull of admissible payoff vectors admit arbitrage and identify optimal arbitrage portfolios through integer programming. Using venue metadata and semantic analysis of resolution criteria, we recover 1.9 million logical relations and compile them into constraint systems covering more than 255,000 contracts. We replay full-depth Polymarket order books to simulate an arbitrageur executing these portfolios against resting orders. Among settled portfolios, an ideal arbitrageur that takes the full displayed depth of every opportunity and reuses its capital at resolution earns a risk-free return of 3.5% a week after spreads and fees. We find that arbitrage opportunities persist longer and attract less observed participation where relation discovery and execution are more costly.

Suggested Citation

  • Hongjian Shi & Daojing Zhai, 2026. "Combinatorial Arbitrage in Prediction Markets," Papers 2610.23517, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2026.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2610.23517
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.23517
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2610.23517. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.