Bettor preferences and market efficiency in football totals markets

The betting markets for totals in college football and arena football provide additional evidence of bettor preference for scoring. The results for college football and arena football markets are similar to those found in the professional football and professional basketball totals market. In all of these leagues, the overs are overbet. We suggest that there is a clear preference for bettors to bet the over and the extent of the bias depends upon the volume of uninformed bettors to informed bettors and limits placed on bets in these markets.     

Regional information and market efficiency: the case of spread betting in United States college football

Using game results over a seven year span (1999–2006), we find that United States college football teams in arid regions “win” against the spread in 56.64% of games in which they host a team from a humid region. This result provides statistically significant evidence for both weak and strong form inefficiency in the spread betting markets of such games. By examining other cases of intraregional and interregional competition within the sport, we conclude that this inefficiency does not arise from the effects of travel or home field advantage. Rather, the result indicates that climate aridity is an observed characteristic for which college football betting markets do not accurately control. It is quite rare to find strong form market inefficiency arise from a single variable rather than from an elaborate, multivariable betting strategy. Therefore, the effect of climate aridity upon college football spread betting market efficiency can be characterized as dramatic. It is conjectured that remote market participants may need to “experience” certain types of relevant regional information, such as climate, to act in a market efficient manner.     

Appropriate roles for statistical decision theory and hypothesis testing in model selection: An exposition

Statistical studies in the social sciences often analyze a cross section of communities that are assumed to be homogeneous for certain characteristics. However, the researcher might be interested in investigating the general behavior of all communities as well as particular differences between groups of communities that are spatially separated. This paper suggests, and empirically examines, a procedure which utilizes both statistical decision theory and hypothesis testing and enables us to determine the best model for estimating behavioral relationships for the full sample and for subgroups. The paper examines property crime occurrences in 94 New Jersey suburban communities of Philadelphia utilizing the full sample as well as subgroups within it. The purpose of grouping is to further understand the possible interjurisdictional mobility of urban criminals. The study suggests possible factors that induce urban criminals to commit crimes in the suburbs.     

The state of research on markets for sports betting and suggested future directions

Studies of markets for sports betting can be a rich source of knowledge on the process of price formation and the information content of market prices. But recent research in this field examines questions of a technical nature, questions of interest mostly to active participants in the literature. A change in direction, motivated by creative use of the efficiency hypothesis, may deliver insights that would be valuable to the profession in general. Some preliminary analyses along these lines are presented in the hope of stimulating new lines of inquiry in the field.     

The behaviour of betting and currency markets on the night of the EU referendum

We study the behaviours of the Betfair betting market and the sterling/dollar exchange rate (futures price) during 24 June 2016, the night of the EU referendum. We investigate how the two markets responded to the announcement of the voting results by employing a Bayesian updating methodology to update prior opinion about the likelihood of the final outcome of the vote. We then relate the voting model to the real-time evolution of the market-determined prices as the results were announced. We find that, although both markets appear to be inefficient in absorbing the new information contained in the vote outcomes, the betting market seems less inefficient than the FX market. The different rates of convergence to the fundamental value between the two markets lead to highly profitable arbitrage opportunities.     

The value of statistical forecasts in the UK association football betting market

In this paper, we evaluate the economic significance of statistical forecasts of UK Association Football match outcomes in relation to betting market prices. We present a detailed comparison of odds set by different bookmakers in relation to forecast model predictions, and analyse the potential for arbitrage across firms. We also examine extreme odds biases. A detailed re-examination of match result odds and a new examination of correct score odds for the period 1993 to 1996 suggest that the market is inefficient.     

Cointegration and joint efficiency of international commodity markets

This paper investigates the semi-strong efficiency hypothesis in the international commodity markets of four industrialized countries, using vector autoregression (VAR) and cointegration techniques. Efficiency in these markets requires the corresponding real exchange rates to be martingales with respect to any information set available in the public domain. In the context of a VAR consisting only of real exchange rates, we show that necessary and sufficient conditions for joint efficiency of all the markets under consideration amount to the VAR being of order one (Markovness) and non-cointegrated. On the contrary, in a VAR extended by other potentially “relevant” variables, such as the corresponding real interest rates, non-cointegration and Markovness are only sufficient conditions for the same commodity markets to be characterized as jointly efficient. We also suggest methods for efficiency testing in each individual market within a cointegrated VAR and, finally, we discuss possible long-run linkages among the real exchange rates and real interest rates in association with efficiency in the commodity markets. JEL Classification Number: F31     

Information precision and asymptotic efficiency of industrial markets

I present a strategic model of a bilateral oligopoly with asymmetric information to examine (i) the validity of the conjecture of price-taking behavior in such markets as the number of agents becomes large and (ii) the effect of the rate that individual information precision decreases with increased number of agents on convergence to price-taking and efficiency. I show that with downstream competition, increasing the number of sellers may make all participants price-takers in the limit, but increasing the number of buyers may not. When the total precision of information in the market is high, price-taking and full social efficiency is achieved in the limit with large numbers of buyers and sellers. However, if the total precision of information in the market is poor, price-taking conjecture may fail and large inefficiencies, including full inefficiency, can occur in the limiting outcome. The rate of decrease of individual information precision with increased number of agents determines the rate of convergence to efficiency, and the convergence is slower than that predicted by single-unit auction models in the literature. I also demonstrate that when the number of sellers or both the number of buyers and the sellers go to infinity, price-taking and information aggregation tend to go together. When the number of buyers goes to infinity, however, information can get aggregated when the agents do not become price-takers in the limit. Albeit, in the latter case, the aggregated information is masked by the noise in the sellers’ signals and the cost variability.     

A methodology for testing a new spatial model of elections

The purpose of this paper is to offer a methodology for testing a new spatial theory of elections. Specifically, it is shown that the new spatial model of elections developed by Enelow and Hinich (1984a) is statistically equivalent to assuming that a classical factor structure underlies the data that voters provide concerning the issue positions of themselves and the candidates. A factor analysis of the sample correlation matrix of candidate variables averaged over voters and issues provides consistent estimates of the candidate locations in the space of predictive dimensions postulated by Enelow and Hinich, and the facor scores assigned to the voters can be used to project the voters onto the same predictive space with the candidates. This new scaling method is used to locate the positions of voters and candidates in the underlying predictive space of the 1980 Presidential election. Internal checks confirm the empirical adequacy of the candidate locations, and probit analysis is used as an external check on the empirical adequacy of the voter locations. For the pre-election data, no loss of accuracy in predicting voter choice was found in moving from the issue data to the estimated factor locations of voters and candidates. For the post-election data, a modest drop in accuracy was discovered. Overall, the empirical adequacy of factor analysis was confirmed as a methodology for testing the new Enelow-Hinich spatial model of elections.     

Platform competition: Betfair and the UK market for sports betting

We examine two episodes of strategic interaction in the UK betting industry: (a) Betfair (an entrant multisided platform, or MSP) versus Flutter (also an MSP), and (b) Betfair versus traditional bookmakers. We find that although Betfair was an underfunded second mover in the betting exchange space, it was able to attract punters at a much faster rate than the better‐funded first mover, Flutter. Moreover, while Betfair and traditional bookmakers competed aggressively for market share, they also developed a highly complementary relationship that favored all parties. We discuss implications for research in the economics and management of MSPs. Specifically, we argue that the literature would benefit from work that endogenizes platform design and that considers the possible competitive and cooperative interactions between the business models of traditional incumbents and those of potential innovative MSP entrants.     

Crack spread hedging: accounting for time‐varying volatility spillovers in the energy futures markets

Crude oil, heating oil, and unleaded gasoline futures contracts are simultaneously analysed for their effectiveness in reducing price volatility for an energy trader. A conceptual model is developed for a trader hedging the ‘crack spread’. Various hedge ratio estimation techniques are compared to a Multivariate GARCH model that directly incorporates the time to maturity effect often found in futures markets. Modelling of the time‐variation in hedge ratios via the Multivariate GARCH methodology, and thus taking into account volatility spillovers between markets is shown to result in significant reductions in uncertainty even while accounting for trading costs. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Small is beautiful: Implications of reliability and statistical power for testing the efficacy of HR interventions

The development of optimal human resource practices is often contingent on the accurate statistical testing of potential interventions. Testing the efficacy of HR interventions can be enhanced by taking additional measures to improve statistical power, but the traditional means of increasing power through sample size are often beyond the cost and ability of HR professionals to pursue. This article, therefore, focuses on measurement procedures as an alternative way to increase statistical power for detecting HR intervention effects. Selection of reliable and appropriate measures and subsequent instrumentation are examined as efficacious and cost‐beneficial techniques that can be employed during the planning and designing stage of a study for augmenting statistical power to optimize business decision making. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A statistical procedure for testing social reciprocity at group,dyadic and individual levels

This paper examines statistical analysis of social reciprocity, that is, the balance between addressing and receiving behaviour in social interactions. Specifically, it focuses on the measurement of social reciprocity by means of directionality and skew-symmetry statistics at different levels. Two statistics have been used as overall measures of social reciprocity at group level: the directional consistency and the skew-symmetry statistics. Furthermore, the skew-symmetry statistic allows social researchers to obtain complementary information at dyadic and individual levels. However, having computed these measures, social researchers may be interested in testing statistical hypotheses regarding social reciprocity. For this reason, it has been developed a statistical procedure, based on Monte Carlo sampling, in order to allow social researchers to describe groups and make statistical decisions.     

Market efficiency,asset returns,and the size of the risk premium in global equity markets

An important economic insight is that observed equity prices must equal the present value of the cash flows associated with the equity claim. An implication of this insight is that present values of cash flows must also quantitatively justify the observed volatility and cross-correlations of asset returns. In this paper, we show that parametric economic models for present values can indeed account for the observed high ex post return volatility and cross-correlation observed across five major equity markets—the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, and Japan. We present evidence that cash flow growth rates contain a small predictable long-run component; this feature, in conjunction with time-varying systematic risk, can justify key empirical characteristics of observed equity prices. Our model also has direct implications for the level of equity prices and specific versions of the model can, in many cases, capture observed price levels. Our evidence suggests that the ex ante risk premium on the global market portfolio has dropped considerably—we show that this fall in the risk premium is related to a decline in the conditional variance of global real cash flow growth rates.     

Biases,variances and covariances of raking ratio estimators for marginal and cell totals and averages of observed characteristics

Summary On the basis of a simple random sample from a population, on which a cross-classification is defined with known marginal frequenciesN _i. andN _.j , one wishes to estimate the cell frequenciesN _ij , as well as cell totalsY _ij , marginal totalsY _i. andY _.j , and the grand totalY for characteristics measured on the units. Various authors have discussed so-called raking ratio estimators, which are built up from the estimated cell values by addition. They have given the bias and variance of this estimator ofY. This paper derives biases, variances and covariances for the corresponding estimators of the cell and marginal totals and of the corresponding marginal averages.     

Implicit markets and the demand for housing characteristics

Important methodological problems in applying Rosen's (1974) model of implicit markets to housing characteristics are inadequately addressed in the literature. This paper summarizes these methodological issues and discusses advantages and disadvantages of various means of coping with these problems in empirical applications. Structural housing characteristics demand estimates are presented, along with an assessment of their accuracy. The results generally are insensitive to specification choices, suggesting the findings are plausible.     

浅析我国工程承包商的国内生存环境及应对措施

对目前我国工程承包商施工任务不足、资金紧张、工程施工要求高、施工利润空间狭小以及非正常损失支出较高等经营困难进行了分析并相应地提出了一些措施。     

Two-stage non Gaussian QML estimation of GARCH models and testing the efficiency of the Gaussian QMLE

In generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH) models, the standard identifiability assumption that the variance of the iid process is equal to 1 can be replaced by an alternative moment assumption. We show that, for estimating the original specification based on the standard identifiability assumption, efficiency gains can be expected from using a quasi-maximum likelihood (QML) estimator based on a non Gaussian density and a reparameterization based on an alternative identifiability assumption. A test allowing to determine whether a reparameterization is needed, that is, whether the more efficient QMLE is obtained with a non Gaussian density, is proposed.