REDUCING FAT IN THE U.K. DIET — SOME LEGISLATIVE FACTORS

A high fat diet has been associated with a number of clinical conditions and it is recommended that the quantity of fat in the U.K. diet be reduced. Many foodstuffs of high fat content sold in the U.K. are subject to compositional regulations. The authors illustrate how the current regulations are acting to perpetuate the high fat nature of these food items and show how amendment of the legislation would be a useful strategy leading to a reduction in fat intake.     

A Comparison of Dividend,Cash Flow,and Earnings Approaches to Equity Valuation*

Standard formulas for valuing the equity of going concerns require forecasting payoffs to infinity but practical analysis requires that payoffs be forecasted over finite horizons. This truncation inevitably involves often-troublesome terminal value calculations. This paper contrasts dividend discount techniques, discounted cash flow analysis, and techniques based on accrual earnings when each is applied with finite-horizon forecasts. Valuations based on average ex post payoffs over various horizons, with and without terminal value calculations, are compared with ex ante market prices to discover the error introduced by each technique in truncating the horizon. Valuation errors are lower using accrual earnings techniques rather than cash flow and dividend discounting techniques. The accounting features that make a given technique less than ideal for finite horizon analysis are also detailed. Conditions where a given technique requires particularly long forecasting horizons are identified and the performance of the alternative techniques under those conditions is examined.     

Testing Market Efficiency: Evidence From The NFL Sports Betting Market

This article examines the efficiency of the National Football League (NFL) betting market. The standard ordinary least squares (OLS) regression methodology is replaced by a probit model. This circumvents potential econometric problems, and allows us to implement more sophisticated betting strategies where bets are placed only when there is a relatively high probability of success. In-sample tests indicate that probit-based betting strategies generate statistically significant profits. Whereas the profitability of a number of these betting strategies is confirmed by out-of-sample testing, there is some inconsistency among the remaining out-of-sample predictions. Our results also suggest that widely documented inefficiencies in this market tend to dissipate over time.