IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jrp/jrpwrp/2007-033.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information Aggregation and Beliefs in Experimental Parimutuel Betting Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Frederic Koessler

    (THEMA (CNRS), Universite de Cergy-Pontoise)

  • Charles Noussair

    (Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Tilburg University)

  • Anthony Ziegelmeyer

    (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group)

Abstract

We study sequential parimutuel betting markets with asymmetrically informed bettors, using an experimental approach. In one treatment, groups of eight participants play twenty repetitions of a sequential betting game. The second treatment is identical, except that bettors are observed by other participants who assess the winning probabilities of each potential outcome. In the third treatment, the same individuals make bets and assess the winning probabilities of the outcomes. A favorite-longshot bias is observed in the first and second treatments, but does not exist in the third treatment. Information aggregation is better in the third than in the other two treatments, and contrarian betting is almost completely eliminated by the belief elicitation procedure. Making bets improves the accuracy of stated beliefs. We propose a theoretical model, the Adaptive Model, to describe individual behavior and we find that it effectively explains betting decisions, especially in the third treatment.

Suggested Citation

  • Frederic Koessler & Charles Noussair & Anthony Ziegelmeyer, 2007. "Information Aggregation and Beliefs in Experimental Parimutuel Betting Markets," Jena Economics Research Papers 2007-033, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    • Handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2007-033
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2007/wp_2007_033.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gabriele Camera & Charles Noussair & Steven Tucker, 2003. "Rate-of-return dominance and efficiency in an experimental economy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 22(3), pages 629-660, October.
    2. Mathias Drehmann & Jörg Oechssler & Andreas Roider, 2005. "Herding and Contrarian Behavior in Financial Markets: An Internet Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1403-1426, December.
    3. Huck, Steffen & Weizsacker, Georg, 2002. "Do players correctly estimate what others do? : Evidence of conservatism in beliefs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 71-85, January.
    4. Angela A. Hung & Charles R. Plott, 2001. "Information Cascades: Replication and an Extension to Majority Rule and Conformity-Rewarding Institutions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1508-1520, December.
    5. Marimon, Ramon & Sunder, Shyam, 1993. "Indeterminacy of Equilibria in a Hyperinflationary World: Experimental Evidence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(5), pages 1073-1107, September.
    6. Theo Offerman & Joep Sonnemans & Gijs Van De Kuilen & Peter P. Wakker, 2009. "A Truth Serum for Non-Bayesians: Correcting Proper Scoring Rules for Risk Attitudes ," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(4), pages 1461-1489.
    7. Miguel A. Costa-Gomes & Georg Weizsäcker, 2008. "Stated Beliefs and Play in Normal-Form Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 729-762.
    8. Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino, 2005. "Herd Behavior in a Laboratory Financial Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1427-1443, December.
    9. Robin Cubitt & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 1998. "On the Validity of the Random Lottery Incentive System," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(2), pages 115-131, September.
    10. Nathaniel T. Wilcox & Nick Feltovich, 2000. "Thinking Like a Game Theorist: Comment," Monash Economics Working Papers archive-30, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    11. Yaw Nyarko & Andrew Schotter, 2002. "An Experimental Study of Belief Learning Using Elicited Beliefs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(3), pages 971-1005, May.
    12. Bruno Jullien & Bernard Salanie, 2000. "Estimating Preferences under Risk: The Case of Racetrack Bettors," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 503-530, June.
    13. Koessler, Frédéric & Noussair, Charles & Ziegelmeyer, Anthony, 2008. "Parimutuel betting under asymmetric information," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(7-8), pages 733-744, July.
    14. Croson, Rachel T. A., 2000. "Thinking like a game theorist: factors affecting the frequency of equilibrium play," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 299-314, March.
    15. Vaughan Williams, Leighton, 1999. "Information Efficiency in Betting Markets: A Survey," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 1-30, January.
    16. Avery, Christopher & Zemsky, Peter, 1998. "Multidimensional Uncertainty and Herd Behavior in Financial Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 724-748, September.
    17. Richard Mckelvey & Thomas Palfrey, 1998. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Extensive Form Games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 9-41, June.
    18. Schnytzer, Adi & Shilony, Yuval, 1995. "Inside Information in a Betting Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(431), pages 963-971, July.
    19. Charles F. Manski, 2004. "Measuring Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(5), pages 1329-1376, September.
    20. McKelvey, Richard D & Page, Talbot, 1990. "Public and Private Information: An Experimental Study of Information Pooling," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1321-1339, November.
    21. Charles R. Plott & Jorgen Wit & Winston C. Yang, 2003. "Parimutuel betting markets as information aggregation devices: experimental results," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 22(2), pages 311-351, September.
    22. Terrell, Dek, 1994. "A Test of the Gambler's Fallacy: Evidence from Pari-mutuel Games," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 309-317, May.
    23. Colin F. Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin-Kuan Chong, 2004. "A Cognitive Hierarchy Model of Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 861-898.
    24. Offerman, Theo & Sonnemans, Joep & Schram, Arthur, 1996. "Value Orientations, Expectations and Voluntary Contributions in Public Goods," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(437), pages 817-845, July.
    25. Johnson, Eric J. & Camerer, Colin & Sen, Sankar & Rymon, Talia, 2002. "Detecting Failures of Backward Induction: Monitoring Information Search in Sequential Bargaining," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 104(1), pages 16-47, May.
    26. Dorothea Kübler & Georg Weizsäcker, 2004. "Limited Depth of Reasoning and Failure of Cascade Formation in the Laboratory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(2), pages 425-441.
    27. Anderson, Lisa R & Holt, Charles A, 1997. "Information Cascades in the Laboratory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 847-862, December.
    28. Anthony Ziegelmeyer & Marie-HÈlËne Broihanne & FrÈdÈric Koessler, 2004. "Sequential Parimutuel Betting in the Laboratory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 165-186, March.
    29. 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. Koessler, Frédéric & Noussair, Charles & Ziegelmeyer, Anthony, 2008. "Parimutuel betting under asymmetric information," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(7-8), pages 733-744, July.
    2. Jianying Qiu, 2007. "Loss aversion and mental accounting: the favorite longshot bias in parimutuel betting," Jena Economics Research Papers 2007-017, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.

    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. Frederic Koessler & Ch. Noussair & A. Ziegelmeyer, 2005. "Individual Behavior and Beliefs in Experimental Parimutuel Betting Markets," THEMA Working Papers 2005-08, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    2. Koessler, Frédéric & Noussair, Charles & Ziegelmeyer, Anthony, 2012. "Information aggregation and belief elicitation in experimental parimutuel betting markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 195-208.
    3. Dominitz, Jeff & Hung, Angela A., 2009. "Empirical models of discrete choice and belief updating in observational learning experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 94-109, February.
    4. Miguel A. Costa-Gomes & Georg Weizsäcker, 2008. "Stated Beliefs and Play in Normal-Form Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 729-762.
    5. Anthony Ziegelmeyer & Frédéric Koessler & Juergen Bracht & Eyal Winter, 2010. "Fragility of information cascades: an experimental study using elicited beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(2), pages 121-145, June.
    6. Sandra Ludwig & Julia Nafziger, 2011. "Beliefs about overconfidence," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 70(4), pages 475-500, April.
    7. Armantier, Olivier & Treich, Nicolas, 2013. "Eliciting beliefs: Proper scoring rules, incentives, stakes and hedging," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 17-40.
    8. Jonathan E. Alevy & Michael S. Haigh & John List, 2006. "Information Cascades: Evidence from An Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," NBER Working Papers 12767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Anna Conte & M. Levati, 2014. "Use of data on planned contributions and stated beliefs in the measurement of social preferences," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(2), pages 201-223, February.
    10. Polonio, Luca & Coricelli, Giorgio, 2019. "Testing the level of consistency between choices and beliefs in games using eye-tracking," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 566-586.
    11. Costa-Gomes, Miguel A. & Huck, Steffen & Weizsäcker, Georg, 2014. "Beliefs and actions in the trust game: Creating instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 88, pages 298-309.
    12. Mariana Blanco & Dirk Engelmann & Alexander Koch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2010. "Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(4), pages 412-438, December.
    13. Simon Gächter & Elke Renner, 2010. "The effects of (incentivized) belief elicitation in public goods experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(3), pages 364-377, September.
    14. Simon Gächter & Elke Renner, 2010. "The effects of (incentivized) belief elicitation in public goods experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(3), pages 364-377, September.
    15. Karl Schlag & James Tremewan & Joël Weele, 2015. "A penny for your thoughts: a survey of methods for eliciting beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 457-490, September.
    16. Eyting, Markus & Schmidt, Patrick, 2021. "Belief elicitation with multiple point predictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    17. Mathias Drehmann & Jörg Oechssler & Andreas Roider, 2005. "Herding and Contrarian Behavior in Financial Markets: An Internet Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1403-1426, December.
    18. Feri, Francesco & Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A. & Ponti, Giovanni & Vega-Redondo, Fernando, 2011. "Error cascades in observational learning: An experiment on the Chinos game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 136-146, September.
    19. Anna Conte & M. Vittoria Levati & Natalia Montinari, 2019. "Experience in public goods experiments," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 86(1), pages 65-93, February.
    20. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri & Rasocha, Vlastimil, 2021. "Experimental methods: Eliciting beliefs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 234-256.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Parimutuel betting; Information aggregation; Elicited beliefs; Experimental economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:jrp:jrpwrp:2007-033. 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: Markus Pasche (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jenecon.de .

    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.