This paper investigates the intraday effects of unannounced foreign exchange intervention on bid-ask exchange rate spreads using official intraday intervention data provided by the Danish central bank. Our starting point is a simple theoretical model of the bid-ask spread which we use to...

We present some simple utility functions whose Marshallian demand functions possess the Giffen property: at some price-wealth pairs, the demand for a good marginally increases in response to an increase in its own price. The utility functions satisfy standard preference properties throughout the...

We analyze a binary prediction market in which traders have heterogeneous prior beliefs and private information. Realistically, we assume that traders are allowed to invest a limited amount of money (or have decreasing absolute risk aversion). We show that the rational expectations equilibrium...

According to the favorite-longshot bias, longshots are overbet relative to favorites. We propose an explanation for this bias (and its reverse) based on an equilibrium model of informed betting in parimutuel markets. The bias arises because bettors take positions without knowing the positions...

In parimutuel betting markets, it has been observed that proportionally too many bets are placed on longshots, late bets are more informative than early bets, and a sizeable fraction of bets are placed early. We propose an explanation for these facts based on equilibrium incentives of privately...

We show that far from capturing a formally new phenomenon, informational herding is really a special case of single-person experimentation - and `bad herds' the typical failure of complete learning. We then analyze the analogous team equilibrium, where individuals maximize the present discounted...

In a binary prediction market in which risk-neutral traders have heterogeneous prior beliefs and are allowed to invest a limited amount of money, the static rational expectations equilibrium price is demonstrated to underreact to information. This effect is consistent with a favorite-longshot...

This paper develops and compares two theories of strategic behavior of professional forecasters. The first theory posits that forecasters compete in a forecasting contest with pre-specified rules. In equilibrium of a winner-take-all contest, forecasts are excessively differentiated. According to...

According to the favorite-longshot bias observed in parimutuel betting, the final distribution of bets overestimates the winning chance of longshots. This paper proposes an explanation of this bias based on late betting by small privately informed bettors. These bettors have an incentive to...