Income and vote switching between local and national elections: evidence from New York State

Between 1994 and 2004, New York State voters returned a Republican governor but always cast a majority of the popular vote in favor of the Democratic candidate in the presidential election. This paper exploits those elections in an effort to understand voters' motivations to switch party allegiances from presidential to gubernatorial elections. We argue that voters are likely to switch political allegiances between gubernatorial and presidential elections because they understand that the purpose of these elections is different. Using individual-level data, we find that low-income individuals are the main source of the switch in the vote.

The liquidity advantage of the quote-driven market: Evidence from the betting industry

Even though betting exchanges are considered to be the superior business model in the betting industry due to less operational risk and lower information costs, bookmakers continue to be successful.We explain the puzzling coexistence of these two market structures with the advantage of guaranteed liquidity in the bookmaker market. Using matched panel data of over 1.8 million bookmaker and bettingexchange odds for 17,410 soccer matches played worldwide, we find that the bookmaker offers higherodds and bettor returns than the betting exchange when liquidity at the betting exchange is low

Overshadowed by Popularity: The Value of Second-Tier Stars in European Football

While second-tier stars lack popularity compared to superstars, their marginal contribution to team performance on the pitch relative to that of superstars is unknown. Relying on league-specific preseason market value distributions to define superstars and second-tier stars, we compare the marginal contributions of superstars and second-tier stars to team performance on the pitch in the top five European football leagues. Examining the impact of unexpected injury-related absences, we find that second-tier stars’ marginal contribution is at least equal to that of superstars. Thus, the players with arguably the highest costs for clubs do not contribute accordingly to short-run sportive success

When the league table lies: Does outcome bias lead to informationally inefficient markets?

We study whether outcome bias persists in markets with actors who are financially incentivized to make optimal decisions. We test whether inherently noisy match outcomes from European football are correctly incorporated into prices from a betting exchange market. We find that market prices overestimate (underestimate) the winning probability of teams that previously overperformed (underperformed) in terms of match outcomes compared to their performance based on “expected goals”. This pattern is mirrored in negative (positive) betting returns on overperforming (underperforming) teams. These results suggest that even competitive market mechanisms fail to completely erase outcome bias

Are Expectations Misled by Chance? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Financial Analysts

We examine whether finance professionals deviate from Bayes’ theorem on the processing of nondiagnostic information when forecasting quarterly earnings. Using field data from sell-side financial analysts and employing a regression discontinuity design, we find that analysts whose forecasts have barely been met become increasingly optimistic relative to when their forecasts have barely been missed. This result is consistent with an update of analysts’ expectations after observing uninformative performance signals. Our results also suggest that this behavior leads to significantly worse forecasting accuracy in the subsequent quarter. We contribute to the literature by providing important field evidence of expectation formation under uninformative signals

Replication: Do coaches stick with what barely worked? Evidence of outcome bias in sports

We replicate the finding of Lefgren et al. (2015) showing that professional basketball coaches in the NBA discontinuously change their starting lineup more often after narrow losses than after narrow wins. This result is consistent with outcome bias because such narrow outcomes are conditionally uninformative. As our paper shows, this pattern is not restricted to the NBA; we also find evidence of outcome bias in the top women’s professional basketball league and college basketball. Finally, we show that outcome bias in coaching decisions generalizes to the National Football League (NFL). We conclude that outcome bias is credible and robust, although it has weakened over time in some instances

Brain Tumor Vascular Network Segmentation from Micro-Tomography

Micro-tomography produces high resolution images of bio- logical structures such as vascular networks. In this paper, we present a new approach for segmenting vascular network into pathological and normal regions from considering their micro-vessel 3D structure only. We define and use a condi- tional random field for segmenting the output of a watershed algorithm. The tumoral and normal classes are thus character- ized by their respective distribution of watershed region size interpreted as local vascular territories

Vascular network segmentation: an unsupervised approach

Micro-tomography produces high resolution images of biological structures such as vascular networks. In this paper, we present a new approach for segmenting vascular network into pathological and normal regions from considering their micro-vessel 3D structure only. We consider a partition of the volume obtained by a watershed algorithm based on the distance from the nearest vessel. Each territory is characterized by its volume and the local vascular density. The volume and density maps are first regularized by minimizing the total variation. Then, a new approach is proposed to segment the volume from the two previous restored images based on hypothesis testing. Results are presented on 3D micro-tomographic images of the brain micro-vascular network

The threat of revolution can play a pivotal role in spurring democratisation

Revolution itself brings seismic political changes to whichever country it takes place in. But what of the threat of revolution? The theory that it does is well-established, and Toke S. Aidt, Gabriel Leon, Raphael Franck, Peter S. Jensen provide further evidence in support of the claim here here

Outcome bias in self-evaluations: Quasi-experimental field evidence from Swiss driving license exams

Exploiting a quasi-experimental field setting, we examine whether people are outcome biased when self-evaluating their past decisions. Using data from Swiss driving license exams, we find that candidates who narrowly passed the theoretical driving exam are significantly less likely to pass the subsequent practical driving exam – which is taken several months after the theoretical exam – than those who narrowly failed. Those candidates who passed the theoretical exam on their first attempt receive more objections regarding their momentary, on-the-spot decisions in the practical exam, consistent with the idea that the underlying behavioral difference is worse preparation