Whilst Cumulative Prospect theory (CPT) provides an explanation of gambling on longshots at actuarially unfair odds, it cannot explain why people might bet on more favoured outcomes. This paper shows that this is explicable if the degree of loss aversion experienced by the agent is reduced for...

Recent research by Gu and Wu (2003) and Basu and Markov (2004) suggests that the well-known optimism bias in analysts' earnings forecasts is attributable to analysts minimizing symmetric, linear loss functions when the distribution of forecast errors is skewed. An alternative explanation for...

This paper investigates the extent to which exam performance at the end of compulsory education has been affected by three major education reforms: the introduction of a quasimarket following the Education Reform Act (1988); the specialist schools initiative introduced in 1994; and the Excellence in...

The paper tests, in the context of an open sports league, whether greater success is achieved by clubs in markets with larger populations. The relationship is strong but, to a limited extent, mitigated by more clubs establishing in large markets.

This paper investigates differences between Britain's ethnic groups in their educational attainment at age 16 and their subsequent destinations from school. We use pooled cross-sectional data for the period 1992-98, derived from the Youth Cohort Study, the School Performance Tables and the...

Nonlinear models of deviations from PPP have recently provided an important, theoretically well motivated, contribution to the PPP puzzle. In recent work the equilibrium level has been modelled either as constant or as time varying with very similar statistical fits and very different economic...

In the context of a standard model of optimal monetary policy, I argue that expectations should be treated as adaptive rather than rational. This argument is justified by considering the rational expectations equilibrium of this model as the limit point of a sequence in which agents...

A persistent and sizeable literature argues that the reported job dissatisfaction of union members is spurious. It reflects either the sorting of workers across union status or the sorting of union recognition across jobs. We cast doubt on this argument presenting the first estimates that use...

Similar to most top-tier matches in professional basketball, baseball and soccer, high-level competitions in individualistic sports, such as the tennis tournaments of Wimble-don and Flushing Meadows, the golf tournaments of Augusta and St. Andrews, as well as the marathons of New York and London...

In the field of personnel economics, there are few opportunities to convincingly test for salary returns to specialization as against versatility or multi-tasking. This paper performs such a test by modeling returns to performance measures associated with two different skills practiced by...