The role of small bettors in price formation in betting exchanges

ABSTRACT

The presence of small bettors in betting exchanges generates mispricing, which can lead to exploitation by informed traders or result in permanent price deviations. This paper shows that mispricing from this source is also dependent upon variables of established relevance such as tournament round, the level of attention to the event, the volume of the betting, and bet type, further confirming these findings by means of cumulative accuracy profile (CAP) curves. It also offers evidence of the relevant role played by the type of device used to place the bet, whereby higher mispricing is observed in live bets placed via a mobile device, which appears to be associated with impulsive betting. This last finding could have practical implications for the regulation of the use of mobile devices to access gambling platforms.     

Alcohol demand among young people in Spain: an addictive QUAIDS

This paper analyzes the demand for alcoholic beverages among young people in Spain. To that end, we develop a theoretical model which combines elements from the Theory of Two-Stage Budgeting and the Theory of Addiction, with this being empirically translated into a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) in which the particular characteristics of young people are introduced by Price Scaling (PS) techniques. We then estimate this specification by using data drawn from the Spanish National Survey on Drug Use in the School Population (2000) and the Spanish National Household Survey (2000). Given that wine, beer and spirits all have normal demands, our results suggest that a tax increase imposed with the intention of reducing alcohol consumption would appear to be efficient. This paper was partially written while Ana Isabel Gil was a Visiting Researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, to which she would like to express her gratitude for the hospitality and facilities provided. An earlier version of this paper has been presented at the Spanish Economic Analysis Meeting-2003 (Sevilla, Spain) with all the comments made by the participants being appreciated. Finally, the authors would like to express their thanks for the financial support provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education-CICYT and the European Commission (Project 2FD97-2057). The usual disclaimer applies.     

Specification testing in discretized diffusion models: Theory and practice

We propose two new tests for the specification of both the drift and the diffusion functions in a discretized version of a semiparametric continuous-time financial econometric model. Theoretically, we establish some asymptotic consistency results for the proposed tests. Practically, a simple selection procedure for the bandwidth parameter involved in each of the proposed tests is established based on the assessment of the power function of the test under study. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach of this kind in specification of continuous-time financial econometrics. The proposed theory is supported by good small and medium-sample studies.     

Institutional Constraints,Stakeholder Pressure and Corporate Environmental Reporting Policies

Within the theoretical framework of socio‐political economics, and more specifically of stakeholder theory, this work examines whether companies operating under different institutional constraints and stakeholder pressure tend to emphasize different models of corporate environmental reporting. Furthermore, the paper tests whether different corporate environmental reporting policies are driven by the countries' corporate governance systems. A sample of 3931 international companies was examined through a logistic biplot and conditional mean linear regression models. The main results reveal that companies follow two distinct environmental reporting approaches, which depend on specific stakeholders and institutional requirements. The first model, which is followed by firms within codified law countries, mostly focuses on water and emissions. The second approach, mainly followed by companies operating in common law countries, emphasizes materials and energy issues. This finding reveals that companies gradually modify their environmental strategies to make themselves more compatible with the characteristics of the social and institutional environment, which will result in several corporate benefits. The paper provides several outstanding implications for companies' strategic managers, national institutions and firms' stakeholders, especially for investors and customers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Understanding the Change–Cynicism Cycle: The Role of HR

Employee change cynicism is an unintended consequence of organizational change, which can undermine the effectiveness of change initiatives. Based on social information processing theory, we examine the impact of two human resource roles (administrative expert and strategic change agent) on the relationship between the quantity of organizational change and employee change cynicism. Using multilevel data from 1,831 employees in 70 organizations, we find employees who are exposed to more organizational change report higher levels of change cynicism. However, the strength of the organizational change–cynicism relationship is affected by the role of HR in the employees’ organizations. When HR undertakes an administrative expert role, change is more likely to generate change cynicism. When HR undertakes a strategic change agent role, change is less likely to generate change cynicism. Our results suggest that organizations need to think carefully about the role of HR during organizational change and encourage HR to adopt a strategic change agent role. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Econometric estimation in long-range dependent volatility models: Theory and practice

It is commonly accepted that some financial data may exhibit long-range dependence, while other financial data exhibit intermediate-range dependence or short-range dependence. These behaviours may be fitted to a continuous-time fractional stochastic model. The estimation procedure proposed in this paper is based on a continuous-time version of the Gauss–Whittle objective function to find the parameter estimates that minimize the discrepancy between the spectral density and the data periodogram. As a special case, the proposed estimation procedure is applied to a class of fractional stochastic volatility models to estimate the drift, standard deviation and memory parameters of the volatility process under consideration. As an application, the volatility of the Dow Jones, S&P 500, CAC 40, DAX 30, FTSE 100 and NIKKEI 225 is estimated.     

Managing knowledge through human resource practices: empirical examination on the Spanish automotive industry

This paper considers the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and knowledge management (KM). Specifically, it examines how the human resource (HR) practices that are expected to impact on employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunity to engage in KM, do so by enabling knowledge sharing, knowledge maintaining, and knowledge creation within organizations. HRM expected to impact employees’ abilities include training and development practices. HRM expected to impact on employees’ motivation include rewards and appraisal practices. HRM expected to impact on employees’ opportunities including providing the support of trusting collaborative relationships. Therefore, HR practices impacting employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunities are expected to be positively related to knowledge sharing and maintaining within organizations. HR practices impacting employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunity are expected to be positively related to knowledge creation through their effect on knowledge sharing within organizations. Our research methodology uses a questionnaire survey approach to collect data from firms belonging to the Spanish automotive industry. Results from a final sample of 64 Spanish automotive firms show that HR practices aimed at motivating and giving employees the opportunity to behave as expected significantly affect knowledge sharing and maintaining. Further, knowledge sharing and maintaining is shown to mediate the relationship between HR practices and knowledge creation. The paper ends with a conclusion, limitations and implications for future research.     

Marketing practices in the Spanish rural tourism sector and their contribution to business outcomes

This paper sets out to highlight the importance of entrepreneurial and market orientations for the success of enterprises operating out of a rural base. Using these two strategic frameworks, this paper identifies the marketing practices undertaken by rural enterprises, and evaluates their effect on business performance, on the local entrepreneur, and on the rural area itself. Enterprises operating from a rural location play a strategic role in the sustainable development of economies, in the context of which the rural tourism sector particularly stands out. The use of marketing practices appropriate to the aims, capacities and resources of such enterprises is proposed as a mechanism for improving their performance. Using the Spanish rural tourism sector as the basis, a scale measuring marketing practices, and another scale reflecting three different types of outcome – financial, those linked personally to the entrepreneur, and those in terms of development of the rural environment – are proposed and validated, and the effect of marketing practices on the performance of such enterprises is analysed. The findings, which reveal that marketing practices have a significant effect on the achievement of outcomes, have implications of interest for the literature and for practitioners in the rural enterprise sector.     

Does HRM generate ambidextrous employees for ambidextrous learning? The moderating role of management support

During the past decade, organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a central research stream in management science to investigate how organizations manage to remain successful over time. By using the lens of organizational learning, ambidexterity can be defined as the simultaneous pursuit of exploratory learning and exploitative learning. In this study, we attempt to bring human resource management into the forum by introducing and testing how human resource (HR) systems affect the firm's ambidextrous learning. We show how high-involvement HR systems may support ambidextrous learning by stimulating firm employees to behave ambidextrously. We also emphasize the moderating role of management support in sustaining ambidextrous learning through high-involvement HR systems. A field study of 182 companies from Spain showed that high-involvement HR systems were positively related to ambidextrous learning and validated the moderating role of management support.