Monopoly rents and price fixing in betting markets

Betting markets provide an ideal environment in which to examine monopoly power due to the availability of detailed information on product pricing. In this paper we argue that the pricing strategies of companies in the UK betting industry are likely to be an important source of monopoly rents, particularly in the market for forecast bets. Pricing in these markets are shown to be explicitly coordinated. Further, price information is asymmetrically biased in favor of producers. We find evidence, based on UK data, that pricing of CSF bets is characterized by a significantly higher markup than pricing of single bets. Although this differential can in part be explained by the preferences of bettors, it is reasonable to attribute a significant part of the differential as being due to monopoly power

The Effects of Inhomogeneities on Evaluating the Deceleration Parameter q0_0

Analytic expressions for distance-redshift relations which have been corrected for the effects of some inhomogeneities in the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) mass density are used to illustrate the significance of inhomogeneities on a determination of $q_0$ made by using Type Ia supernovae. The value of $q_0$ inferred from a given set of observations depends on the fractional amount of matter in inhomogeneities and is up to 50 percent larger than that obtained by using the standard Mattig $m$-$z$ result for pure dust FRW models.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures in separate uuencoded fil

A policy response to the e-commerce revolution: the case of betting taxation in the UK

Several environmental changes in the 1990s – including the introduction of a national lottery, the rise of Internet gambling, and the reduction of trade barriers within the EU – induced the UK government to initiate a large-scale review of betting duty. As a result of this review, the government recently announced a significant reduction in betting taxes. They also decided to replace the current general betting duty (GBD), levied as a proportion of betting stakes, with a gross profits tax (GPT), based on the net revenue of bookmakers. We examine the economic rationale behind these decisions and demonstrate how these tax changes have broad implications regarding optimal levels of taxation for other sources of government revenue

Do depositors care about enforcement actions?

Since 1990, federal bank supervisors have publicly announced formal enforcement actions. This change in regime provides a natural laboratory to test two propositions: (1) claims by economists that putting confidential supervisory information in the public domain will enhance market discipline and (2) claims by bank supervisors that releasing such data will spark runs. To evaluate these propositions, we measure depositor reaction to 87 Federal Reserve announcements of enforcement actions. We compare deposit growth rates and yield spreads before and after the announcements at the sample banks and a control group of peer banks. The data show no evidence of unusual deposit withdrawals or spread increases at the sample banks following the announcements of formal actions. These results suggest that public announcements of enforcement actions did not spark bank runs or enhance depositor discipline. Apparently, depositors did not care a great deal about our sample actions.Bank supervision ; Deposit insurance

Lidar measurements of thermal structure

Rayleigh backscatter observations at 532 nm and 355 nm of relative atmospheric density above Aberystwyth on a total of 93 nights between Dec. 1982 and Feb. 1985 were used to derive the height variation of temperature in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere. Preliminary results for height up to about 25 km were also obtained from observations of Raman backscattering from nitrogen molecules. Comparisons were carried out for stratospheric heights with satellite borne measurements; good agreement was found between equivalent black body temperatures derived from the lidar observations and those obtained from nadir measurements in three channels of the stratosphere sounder units on NOAA satellites; the lidar based atmospheric temperatures have shown general agreement with but a greater degree of structure than the limb sounding measurements obtained using the SAMS experiment on the NOAA-7 satellite. In summer, stratospheric and mesospheric temperatures showed a smooth height variation similar to that of the CIRA model atmosphere. In contrast, the winter data showed a great variability with height, and marked temperature changes both from night to night and within a given night

Dividends, stock repurchases and signaling: evidence from U.S. panel data

This paper exploits yearly accounting data from 1977 to 1994 to test the relative signaling power of dividends and net stock repurchases. The specification controls for potential agency cost and asset dissipation effects. Specifically, we regress changes in future income before extraordinary items on changes in dividends, changes in net stock repurchases, and a host of control variables. We also split the sample at 1981 to measure the impact of changes in the relative taxation of distribution methods. For the full twenty-year sample, only dividend changes are correlated with changes in future income. Moreover, the dividend coefficient and the repurchases coefficient differ statistically different in every future income equation. Splitting the sample reveals that the pre-1981 subsample drives the full-sample results. Put another way, the empirical link between changes in dividends and changes in future income vanishes just as a revision of the tax law reduced the tax disadvantage of dividend distributions. This evidence supports the notion that, at least for a period in time, firms deliberately exposed shareholders to punitive taxation to signal favorable prospects.Corporate governance

Observations of stratospheric aerosols associated with the El Chichon eruption

Lidar observations of aerosols were carried out at Aberystwyth between Nov. 1982 and Dec. 1985 using a frequency doubled and frequency tripled Nd/Yag laser and a receiver incorporating a 1 m diameter in a Newtonian telescope configuration. In analyses of the experimental data attention is paid to the magnitude of the coefficient relating extinction and backscatter, the choice being related to the possible presence of aerosols in the upper troposphere and the atmospheric densities employed in the normalisation procedure. The aerosol loading showed marked day to day changes in early months and an overall decay was apparent only after April 1983, this decay being consistent with an e sup -1 time of about 7 months. The general decay was accompanied by a lowering of the layer but layers of aerosols were shown intermittently at heights above the main layer in winter months. The height variations of photon counts corrected for range, or of aerosol backscatter ratio, showed clear signatures of the tropopause. A strong correlation was found between the heights of the tropopause identified from the lidar measurements and from radiosonde-borne temperature measurements. A notable feature of the observations is the appearance of very sharp height gradients of backscatter ratio which seem to be produced by differential advection

Multirole cargo aircraft options and configurations

A future requirements and advanced market evaluation study indicates derivatives of current wide-body aircraft, using 1980 advanced technology, would be economically attractive through 2008, but new dedicated airfreighters incorporating 1990 technology, would offer little or no economic incentive. They would be economically attractive for all payload sizes, however, if RD and T costs could be shared in a joint civil/military arrangement. For the 1994-2008 cargo market, option studies indicate Mach 0.7 propfans would be economically attractive in trip cost, aircraft price and airline ROI. Spanloaders would have an even lower price and higher ROI but would have a relatively high trip cost because of aerodynamic inefficiencies. Dedicated airfreighters using propfans at Mach 0.8 cruise, laminar flow control, or cryofuels, would not provide any great economic benefits. Air cushion landing gear configurations are identified as an option for avoiding runway constraints on airport requirements and/or operational constraints are noted