Weak form information efficiency in betting markets

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511493614.003

2 - Weak form information efficiency in betting markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2009

Leighton Vaughan Williams

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Leighton Vaughan Williams

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Leighton Vaughan Williams: Affiliation:
Professor of Economics and Finance Nottingham Business School Nottingham Trent University
Leighton Vaughan Williams: Affiliation:
Nottingham Trent University

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Summary

Introduction

This chapter examines the idea of weak form information efficiency as it has been applied to betting markets, and reviews the concepts, distinctions and tests which are associated with this concept.

It has been shown in chapter 1 that weak form information efficiency is the notion that current prices incorporate all the information available from a study of past prices and price movements. In consequence, in a financial market which is weakly efficient it should not be possible to earn abnormal returns through a strategy of predicting future prices from past information on prices. Indeed, any such strategy should on average yield the same return.

Many studies of weak form information in betting markets have adapted this idea to examine the possibility for earning differential (or even abnormal) returns in the future, from betting on the basis of past information about the yield to bets at identified prices. In a betting market, these prices take the form of ‘odds’. Odds of 3 to 1 laid against an outcome, for example, imply a return to a successful bet of three times the initial stake, plus the initial stake returned. An unsuccessful bet loses the entire stake. The theoretical point is that in a betting market which is weak form efficient the expected return to betting at any identified odds or odds grouping should be identical, unless there are differential costs or risks associated with betting at the various prices.

Type: Chapter
Information: Information Efficiency in Financial and Betting Markets , pp. 84 - 122

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511493614.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2005

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