The University of Buckingham Press Journals
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MAGISTRATES’ COURTS CRIMINAL PRACTICE 2006
Get PDFDavid Brewer (Jordan Publishing 2006), Pp 2422 (Hardback and Cd rom), ISBN 1 84661 011 7, Price £140.00 For many years, criminal practitioners have relied on Archbold Criminal Pleading Evidence & Practice (Sweet and Maxwell, pp 3070, price £310 hardback and cd rom) as ‘the’ trusted aide and mentor to criminal practice in all courts. More recently, Blackstone’s Criminal Practice (Blackstone Press, now Oxford University Press, pp 2061, price £185 hardback and cd rom) has emerged as ‘the’ competitor. However, those who practise largely in the magistrate’s courts find Anthony and Berryman’s Magistrates’ Court Guide (LexisNexis Butterworths) essential reading. Anthony and Berryman’s has its obvious limitations of size (750 pages) and therefore detail, it has its benefits too at just under £50.00. Practitioners in the magistrate’s court find themselves using either Blackstone’s or Archbold together with Anthony and Berryman’s
PUBLIC INFORMATION BIAS AND PREDICTION MARKET ACCURACY
Get PDFHow do prediction markets achieve high levels of accuracy? We propose that, in some situations, traders in prediction markets improve upon publicly available information. Specifically, when there is a known bias in publicly available information, markets provide an incentive for traders to “de-bias” this information. In such a situation, a prediction market will provide a more accurate forecast than the public information available to traders. We test our conjecture using real-money prediction markets for seven local elections in the United States. We find that the prediction market forecasts are significantly more accurate than those generated using the pre-election polls.Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Workshop on The Growth of Gambling and Prediction Markets, the ISBM Conference on Prediction Markets in Marketing: Issues, Challenges and Research Opportunities, the DIMACS Workshop on Markets as Predictive Devices, and the 17th Annual AMA Advanced Research Techniques Forum. The authors thank the participants for their insights which have helped improve this researc
TESTING THE EFFICIENCY OF MARKETS IN THE 2002 WORLD CUP
Get PDFTrading data from the gambling market for the 2002 World Cup provide a unique window through which to test theories of market efficiency. This market provides many of the benefits of a laboratory experiment, but with much higher stakes, experienced participants, and a naturally-occurring environment. The primary drawback of the data is the relatively small number of trades. The evidence concerning market efficiency is mixed. Although markets respond strongly to goals being scored, there is some evidence that prices continue to trend higher for 10-15 minutes after a goal. We also observe systematically negative returns for bets on the pre-game favorite, consistent with the biases seen in wagering on other sports. We document the endogenous emergence of market makers. These market makers are involved in a large share of trades. Increasing from two active market makers to five or more market makers does not appear to improve the functioning of the market. On average, the market makers earn slightly negative returns, implying that other traders are able to identify situations in which market makers are setting inefficient price
WAGERING PREFERENCES OF NFL BETTORS: DETERMINANTS OF BETTING VOLUME
No full textActual betting volume, in terms of the number of bets placed on each game, is studied for the 2008 National Football League season. The dataset includes bets placed through a select group of online sportsbooks, collectively totaling an average of more than 85,000 bets per game. Game-to-game betting volume is shown to be affected by television coverage, as prime-time games on NBC and ESPN have large positive and significant effects. NFL Network coverage, not universally available for viewers, is shown to have a negative and significant effect. Bettors are also shown to prefer matchups between high-quality teams, enjoy uncertainty of outcome, and prefer expected high scoring contests. It appears much of the betting action on NFL football reflects consumption, rather than investment
THE EFFECT OF CONTRACT STRUCTURE ON PREDICTION MARKET PRICE BIASES
No full textPrediction markets add value when they produce unbiased forecasts. However, several prior studies find persistent biases when examining prediction market sides contracts. Sides contracts represent bets on whether the score differential between two teams in a contest will be greater or less than a stated value. We propose that inferences generated from examining Tradesports’ sides contracts may be problematic because they are framed exclusively with respect to favorites. If a favorite-longshot (or reverse favorite-longshot) bias causes these deviations from rationality, it may be that non-sports-related (e.g., internal corporate) prediction markets assets do not suffer from the same shortcomings. To evaluate the generalizability of prior findings, we contrast the price efficiency of Tradesports’ sides and totals contracts. In totals wagers, traders take a position on whether the combine score of both teams in a game will be above or below a stated value. We find that the fundamental structural differences between totals contracts and sides contracts partly determine differences in price efficiencies. Relative to those in the sides market, some price biases in the totals market are significantly smaller in magnitude, and others are absent altogether. Results indicate that contract structure plays a significant role in the ability of prediction markets to produce unbiased estimates
PRICE BIASES IN A PREDICTION MARKET: NFL CONTRACTS ON TRADESPORTS
Get PDFWe examine deviations between the prices and values of binary options listed on Tradesports.com, an online prediction market. Our analysis shows that NFL sides contracts are overpriced on average, indicating that this market may be characterized by a shortage of sellers. We also find that overpricing is more pronounced immediately after information shocks occur, especially when the news is negative. Additionally, while prior research suggests that differences between asset prices and values should be symmetric around the market-price-midpoint of $50, we find that this divergence is instead larger for low-priced contracts. Finally, we demonstrate that a simple rule designed to exploit the identified biases enables a highly profitable trading strategy
THE REGRESSION TOURNAMENT: A NOVEL APPROACH TO PREDICTION MODEL ASSESSMENT
No full textStandard methods to assess the statistical quality of econometric models implicitly assume there is only one person in the world, namely the forecaster with her model(s), and that there exists an objective and independent reality to which the model predictions may be compared. However, on many occasions, the reality with which we compare our predictions and in which we take our actions is co-determined and changed constantly by actions taken by other actors based on their own models. We propose a new method, called a regression tournament, to assess the utility of forecasting models and taking these interactions into account. We present an empirical case of betting on Australian Rules Football matches where the most accurate predictive model does not yield the highest betting return, or, in our terms, does not win a regression tournament
REAL-MONEY VS. PLAY-MONEY FORECASTING ACCURACY IN ONLINE PREDICTION MARKETS – EMPIRICAL INSIGHTS FROM IPREDICT
No full textPrediction markets are online trading platforms where contracts on future events are traded with payoffs being exclusively linked to event occurrence. Scientific research has shown that market prices of such contracts imply high forecasting accuracy through effective information aggregation of dispersed knowledge. This phenomenon is related to incentives for truthful aggregation in the form of real-money or play-money rewards. The question whether real- or play-money incentives enhance higher relative forecast accuracy has been addressed by previous works with diverse findings. The current state of empirical research in his field is subject to two inherent deficiencies. First, inter-market studies suffer from market disparities and differences in the definition of underlying events. Comparisons between two different platforms (one for play-money contracts, one for real-money contracts) are potentially biased by different trading behaviour. Second, the majority of studies are based upon identical datasets of market platforms (IOWA stock exchange, Tradesports/Intrade, NewsFutures).This paper contributes new insights by analysing 44,169 trading observations on ipredict, where real-money and play-money contracts are traded on a variety of events. Forecasting accuracy is analysed on overall trading activity as well as comparison of equal contracts under different monetary incentive schemes. Statistical models are built to analyse the influence of order volumes and days to expiry under both incentive schemes. Ignoring different events in underlying trading activity, play-money contracts imply statistically insignificant excess accuracy. In direct comparison of equal events, real-money contracts, however, real-money contracts predict at significantly higher accuracy. This paper finds a relationship between order volumes and forecasting accuracy whereas the influence of days to expiry and aggregated volumes showed lower R² than was expected by formed hypotheses
SOME PECULIARITIES IN THE USAGE OF KAZAKH, ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS: PROVERBS, SAYINGS AND IDIOMS
Get PDFThe word-stock of a language is usually enriched by units of language such as: words, word-groups and/or by phraseological units. The main difference between words and phrases lies in their form and meaning. A word is a smaller unit than a phrase. Phrases appear in languages describing the nation’s character, traditions and customs. As every nation has its own history, customs and traditions, the common history of humanity connects common things and phenomena such as: nature, war, animals, food, plants etc. Proverbs have mostly been formulated and coined on the basis of these topics. Idioms, proverbs and sayings are used to make a language colourful and fascinating; they are commonly used in all types of language: formal, informal, spoken or written. It is difficult to understand the meaning of the idioms from the words it consists of. If someone does not know that or another idiom they will not understand the whole text or speech. In our research work we would like to reveal the structural, semantic and cognitive peculiarities in the usage and development of phraseological units, mainly the most useful and colourful, ready-made parts, such as proverbs and sayings