Standard parametric specifications of Cumulative Prospect theory (CPT) can explain why agents bet on longshots at actuarially unfair odds. However, the standard specification of CPT cannot explain why people might bet on more favoured outcomes, where by construction the greatest volume of money...

The answer to this question, based on a study of 1000 greyhound races, is 'no'. Although the efficient markets hypothesis asserts that speculative market prices optimally encapsulate all relevant information, it is found that 'Shin probabilities' (based on Shin, 1993), in which a dog's winning...

It is shown that the individual fixed-odds betting market on UK football exhibits the same favourite-longshot bias as that found in horse-racing. The bias appears both in betting on results (home win, away win or draw) and in betting on specific scores, and there are certain trading rules which...

This paper verifies the existence of the favourite-longshot bias in a variety of sports betting markets where odds are set by bookmakers, but the precise pattern of the bias is not identical. Evidence is found to support a central prediction of the Shin (1993) model, which asserts that...

Conditional on the Shin (Economic Journal, 103, 1993) model, the incidence of insider trading is estimated in two different British betting markets: those for horse-racing and the 1997 general election. Formal testing confirms that insider trading is significantly lower in handicap than...

Bookmakers practise a type of product bundling. To bet a horse for a place a punter has to bet an equal amount for a win. The returns to the place component of the bet are determined by a rule of thumb. This paper examines whether the product bundling negates a betting strategy that endeavours...

A book is made for a horse race, and punters place their bets. The problem considered here is how the bookmaker should construct his book. Before this can be solved, it has to be determined how the punters will react to any proposed book. Much of the detailed discussion is confined to a race...

This paper examines whether a measure of insider trading in betting markets derived from the Shin (1993) model is significantly related in samples of horse and greyhound races to an alternative, independently derived, indicator of insider activity suggested by Crafts (1985), namely plunges in...

Estimates of insider trading in the betting on individual races, conditional on the Shin model (1993), are employed in an analysis of the market anomaly observed by Gabriel and Marsden (1990) that Tote payments on winning bets consistently exceed those paid by bookmakers. Use of more appropriate...

This paper demonstrates that the intuitively appealing argument based on the postulated trade-off between expected return, variance and skewness of return of a risk-averse gambler does not provide an explanation of observed betting behaviour. It is shown how the expected utility of a...