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.     

On the Competitive Land Market: Evidence from Hong Kong

This paper examines both theory and empirical evidence on the relationship between market concentration and profitability in Hong Kong's land market. Such a relationship has been the subject of substantial debate among academics and practitioners. The study highlights several distinctive characteristics of property development in Hong Kong, and particularly various competitive strategies. In Hong Kong, land can be acquired through public auction, redevelopment and lease modifications. Thus, those developers without a sufficient land bank tend to be very aggressive in land auction. However, in the land auction market, competition is keen and the land acquired expensive. This study found that the leading property developers do not take the largest share in the land auction market. We argue that the developers tend to locate themselves in a suitable market position or strategic domain, within which they sustain competitiveness by increasing their market share. We also found that the property developers undertaking a relatively high proportion of large-scale projects tend to have a higher proportion of profits from such projects.     

On the Long Run Effects of Public Capital and Disaggregated Public Capital on Aggregate Output

We study the cointegration properties of data on aggregate output, five proxies for labor, two proxies for private capital, public capital, and disaggregated public capital for the United States for 1948–1993. We find evidence of multiple cointegrating vectors; we typically find three or four cointegrating vectors depending on which combination of proxies is evaluated. When public capital is disaggregated by type there is less evidence for cointegration. Finally, innovations in public capital have long lasting effects on output, labor, and private capital, and innovations to output, labor, and private capital also have long lasting effects on public capital.     

Role clarity,communication, and conflict:

A study of the extent of agreement among workers, supervisors, and managers about role sets, supervisory climate, and patterns of influence.     

Cross-sectional Variation in Price Anticipation of Earnings

Estimates of the earnings response coefficient (ERC) can be improved by including leading returns in return-earnings models. This improvement in estimated ERC can be used to measure price anticipation of earnings. It is posited that this price anticipation is related to the information environment of a firm. Theories and prior empirical research pertaining to the information environment (e.g. Bhushan, 1989; Frankel et al., 1994) are used to identify three variables, breadth of trading, capital issues and volatility of returns, which potentially determine the extent of price anticipation of earnings. The empirical tests suggest that the tendency of prices to lead earnings is negatively related to thin trading and is positively related to the propensity for external financing and return volatility in the year immediately prior to that to which the anticipated earnings pertain.     

Impact of comprehensive development zoning on real estate development in Hong Kong

This article presents empirical tests to examine if the comprehensive development area (CDA) where the town planning is more comprehensive has relatively higher economic values than the area outside CDA. The three hypothesis are: (i) CDAs have less environmental complaints than areas outside CDA; (ii) property sales price variances in CDAs are smaller than those in areas outside CDAs; and (iii) property sales prices in CDAs are higher than those in areas outside CDAs. These findings have important implications on efforts to consider planning policy in land use decisions.     

Assessing the compliance of a product with an eco-label: From standards to constraints

The new awareness of the consumers regarding environmental issues should allow companies to gain a competitive advantage by obtaining eco-labels which certify the low impact of a product on the environment. Getting such label requires to analyze a product according to rules expressed in natural language which may be difficult to interpret but also to apply when the product is complex. In order to address this problem, we suggest a method aiming at providing support to the user when checking the compliance of a product with an eco-label. The method is applied on an illustrative example of the literature.