IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v99y1991i3p638-53.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effects of Risk Aversion on Wagering: Point Spread versus Odds

Author

Listed:
  • Woodland, Bill M
  • Woodland, Linda M

Abstract

Currently, casinos and bookies use the point-spread method for betting on football games. Since an odds system is used in various other sports, what factors explain the current structure of the betting market? As the bookie's profits are a percentage of the total money wagered, the existence of point-spread betting indicates that the total money wagered under this betting scheme is greater than that generated by odds betting. This paper suggests that the current market structure is a consequence of risk-averse attitudes of bettors. Copyright 1991 by University of Chicago Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Woodland, Bill M & Woodland, Linda M, 1991. "The Effects of Risk Aversion on Wagering: Point Spread versus Odds," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(3), pages 638-653, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:99:y:1991:i:3:p:638-53
    DOI: 10.1086/261770
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/261770
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. See http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE for details.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/261770?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Figlewski, Stephen, 1979. "Subjective Information and Market Efficiency in a Betting Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(1), pages 75-88, February.
    2. Richard E. Quandt, 1986. "Betting and Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(1), pages 201-207.
    3. Bassett, Gilbert W, Jr, 1981. "Point Spreads versus Odds," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 752-768, August.
    4. J. Hirshleifer, 1966. "Investment Decision Under Uncertainty: Applications of the State-Preference Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 80(2), pages 252-277.
    5. Ali, Mukhtar M, 1977. "Probability and Utility Estimates for Racetrack Bettors," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(4), pages 803-815, August.
    6. Bailey, Martin J & Olson, Mancur & Wonnacott, Paul, 1980. "The Marginal Utility of Income Does not Increase: Borrowing, Lending, and Friedman-Savage Gambles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 372-379, June.
    7. Asch, Peter & Malkiel, Burton G. & Quandt, Richard E., 1982. "Racetrack betting and informed behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 187-194, July.
    8. Lyn D. Pankoff, 1968. "Market Efficiency and Football Betting," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41, pages 203-203.
    9. Hasbrouck, Joel & Friend, Irwin, 1984. "Why Do Companies Pay Dividends? Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(5), pages 1137-1141, December.
    10. Martin Weitzman, 2008. "Utility Analysis And Group Behavior An Empirical Study," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Donald B Hausch & Victor SY Lo & William T Ziemba (ed.), Efficiency Of Racetrack Betting Markets, chapter 9, pages 47-55, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Thaler, Richard H & Ziemba, William T, 1988. "Parimutuel Betting Markets: Racetracks and Lotteries," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 161-174, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bryan C. McCannon, 2015. "Replacement Referees And Nfl Betting Markets," Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 9(2), pages 14-26.
    2. Bill Woodland & Linda Woodland, 1999. "Expected utility, skewness, and the baseball betting market," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(3), pages 337-345.
    3. Arscott, Robert, 2022. "Risk management in the shadow economy: Evidence from the sport betting market," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    4. Adi Schnytzer & Guy Weinberg, 2008. "Testing for Home Team and Favorite Biases in the Australian Rules Football Fixed-Odds and Point Spread Betting Markets," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(2), pages 173-190, April.
    5. Steven D. Levitt, 2003. "How Do Markets Function? An Empirical Analysis of Gambling on the National Football League," NBER Working Papers 9422, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Arne Feddersen & Brad R. Humphreys & Brian P. Soebbing, 2018. "Sentiment Bias in National Basketball Association Betting," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(4), pages 455-472, May.
    7. David Alan Peel, 2013. "On the Implications of the Markowitz Model of Utility embodying Gain Seeking Preferences for Odds on Betting and Bookmakers choice of Spread or Odds Betting," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(2), pages 1420-1428.
    8. Rodney Paul & Andrew Weinbach, 2005. "Introduction to sports symposium," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 29(3), pages 382-384, September.
    9. Tobias J. Moskowitz, 2021. "Asset Pricing and Sports Betting," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(6), pages 3153-3209, December.
    10. Vandenbruaene, Jonas & De Ceuster, Marc & Annaert, Jan, 2023. "Does time series momentum also exist outside traditional financial markets? Near-laboratory evidence from sports betting," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    11. Humphreys, Brad, 2010. "Prices, Point Spreads and Profits: Evidence from the National Football League," Working Papers 2010-5, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    12. Linda M. Woodland & Bill M. Woodland, 2001. "Market Efficiency and Profitable Wagering in the National Hockey League: Can Bettors Score on Longshots?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 67(4), pages 983-995, April.
    13. Timothy J. Brailsford & Philip K. Gray & Stephen A. Easton & Stephen F. Gray, 1995. "The Efficiency of Australian Football Betting Markets," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 20(2), pages 167-195, December.
    14. Andrew Grant & Anastasios Oikonomidis & Alistair C. Bruce & Johnnie E. V. Johnson, 2018. "New entry, strategic diversity and efficiency in soccer betting markets: the creation and suppression of arbitrage opportunities," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(18), pages 1799-1816, December.
    15. Evan Osborne, 2001. "Efficient Markets? Don’t Bet on It," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 2(1), pages 50-61, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Erik Snowberg & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Explaining the Favorite-Long Shot Bias: Is it Risk-Love or Misperceptions?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 723-746, August.
    2. Bill Woodland & Linda Woodland, 1999. "Expected utility, skewness, and the baseball betting market," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(3), pages 337-345.
    3. Russell Sobel & S. Travis Raines, 2003. "An examination of the empirical derivatives of the favourite-longshot bias in racetrack betting," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 371-385.
    4. Swidler, Steve & Shaw, Ron, 1995. "Racetrack wagering and the "uninformed" bettor: A study of market efficiency," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 305-314.
    5. Golec, Joseph & Tamarkin, Maurry, 1991. "The degree of inefficiency in the football betting market : Statistical tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 311-323, December.
    6. Martin Kukuk & Stefan Winter, 2008. "An Alternative Explanation of the Favorite-Longshot Bias," Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 2(2), pages 79-96, September.
    7. Philip W. S. Newall & Dominic Cortis, 2021. "Are Sports Bettors Biased toward Longshots, Favorites, or Both? A Literature Review," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-9, January.
    8. Jinook Jeong & Jee Young Kim & Yoon Jae Ro, 2019. "On the efficiency of racetrack betting market: a new test for the favourite-longshot bias," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(54), pages 5817-5828, November.
    9. Marshall Gramm & C. Nicholas McKinney & Douglas H. Owens & Matt E. Ryan, 2007. "What Do Bettors Want? Determinants of Pari‐Mutuel Betting Preference," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(3), pages 465-491, July.
    10. Alistair C. Bruce & Johnnie E. V. Johnson & John D. Peirson & Jiejun Yu, 2009. "An Examination of the Determinants of Biased Behaviour in a Market for State Contingent Claims," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 76(302), pages 282-303, April.
    11. Norton, Hugh & Gray, Steve & Faff, Robert, 2015. "Yes, one-day international cricket ‘in-play’ trading strategies can be profitable!," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(S2), pages 164-176.
    12. Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sorensen, 2010. "Noise, Information, and the Favorite-Longshot Bias in Parimutuel Predictions," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 58-85, February.
    13. M. Sung & J. E. V. Johnson, 2010. "Revealing Weak‐Form Inefficiency in a Market for State Contingent Claims: The Importance of Market Ecology, Modelling Procedures and Investment Strategies," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 77(305), pages 128-147, January.
    14. Dagaev, Dmitry & Stoyan, Egor, 2020. "Parimutuel betting on the eSports duels: Evidence of the reverse favourite-longshot bias," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    15. Montone, Maurizio, 2021. "Optimal pricing in the online betting market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 344-363.
    16. Niko Suhonen, 2011. "Market Efficiency in Finnish Harness Horse Racing," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 24(1), pages 55-63, Spring.
    17. Stefan Winter & Martin Kukuk, 2008. "Do horses like vodka and sponging? - On market manipulation and the favourite-longshot bias," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 75-87.
    18. Kenneth L. Rhoda & Gerard T. Olson & Jack M. Rappaport, 1999. "Risk Preferences And Information Flows In Racetrack Betting Markets," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 22(3), pages 265-285, September.
    19. Jullien, Bruno & Salanié, Bernard, 2005. "Empirical Evidence on the Preferences of Racetrack Bettors," IDEI Working Papers 178, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    20. Kajii, Atsushi & Watanabe, Takahiro, 2017. "Favorite–longshot bias in pari-mutuel betting: An evolutionary explanation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 56-69.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:99:y:1991:i:3:p:638-53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.