Efficiency Of Racetrack Betting Markets (Hardcover)

~ Donald B. Hausch (Author)
Key Phrases: assigning probabilities, beat the racetrack, total wager, New York, Hong Kong, Management Science (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets has attained cult status among serious students of betting, and the few copies in private hands have long been prized and jealously guarded by their owners. It is indeed a genuine classic which is as relevant today as it was on the day it was first published. As such, it deserves pride of place on the desks of all who care about this fascinating field of enquiry. --Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, Nottingham Trent University

Horseplayers have long understood what economists have recently come to appreciate that the racetrack provides an intriguing laboratory for a better understanding of human behavior. Every year millions of dollars are gambled on horses, and crunching the numbers yields important insights into how real people think about risk and uncertainty, and about how we are often rational and sometimes irrational when making our picks. This extraordinary volume brings together much of the key economic research on these questions, while keeping a consistent focus on the racetrack. The various contributions provide an intriguing tour for the roving economist, and also some key insights for the sharp horseplayer --Justin Wolfers, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

This volume contains many seminal works exploring the efficiency of racetrack betting markets. Since its first publication, this book fast became the bible for all leading betting market scholars and practitioners. The contents have been debated at many academic conferences and the ideas contained here have spawned several successful racing syndicates. There are gems within these pages for the discerning scholar of speculative markets in general and racetrack betting markets in particular. Each time I read the book, fresh ideas for new research spring to mind. This is a must read and a must re-read for anyone seriously interested in racetrack betting markets. For those who have stalked the Internet trying desperately to get hold of a copy of the original volume at a reasonable price, this is a much welcomed 2008 edition --Professor Johnnie E V Johnson, University of Southampton, UK

Product Description

A reprint of one of the classic volumes on racetrack efficiency, this book is the only one in its field that deals with the racetrack betting market in-depth, containing all the important historical papers on racetrack efficiency. As evidenced by the collection of articles, the understanding of racetrack betting is clearly drawn from, and has correspondingly returned something to, all the fields of psychology, economics, finance, statistics, mathematics and management science.

Contents: Psychological Studies; Utility Preferences of Racetrack Bettors; Economic and Mathematical Insights; Efficiency of Win Markets and the Favorite-Longshot Bias; Prices versus Handicapping: Place and Show Anomalies; Efficiency of Exotic Wagering Markets; Research in the Commonwealth and Asia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 680 pages
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company; 2008 Ed edition (June 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9812819185
• ISBN-13: 978-9812819185
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #692,547 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, if you can understand it., July 7, 2003

By	Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets (Economic Theory, Econometrics, and Mathematical Economics) (Hardcover)

William Ziemba and Donald B. Hausch, eds., Efficiencies of Racetrack Betting Markets: Economic Theory, Econometrics, and Mathematical Economics (Academic Press, 1994)

I believe this is the only review I have ever written for a book I do not own. While I was working at a university in the late nineties, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a copy of this in their library after reading Ziemba and Hausch's landmark Beat the Track. For the year between my finding it and my switching jobs, the book was out of the library and in my hands every day. I renewed as often as I could, and when I couldn't, I would drop it off on my way to work and take it out again on my way home. They were inclined to be lenient, because I was the only person who had ever taken the book out of the library.

Let me get one thing straight from the outset: folks, this is not your momma's handicapping manual. For that matter, it's not your shady Uncle George's handicapping manual, either. It's a graduate-level econ textbook. And if you have no background in math (as I didn't at the time, and I still have only what I've gleaned thanks to Howard Sartin and Tom Brohamer), your first trip through this large and ponderous tome will be torturous. You might want to bone up on your equations, not to mention keeping a small handbook of "what Greek letters mean to economists" by your side at all times.

Eventually, however, you will dig your way down to the meaning of the first paper. And then the second. And then the third. And so on. And for the horseplayer with an academic bent (definition, gleaned from some nasty comments during a discussion on the book that irked some folks who didn't like what they were hearing: any bettor who read Rosecrance's The Degenerates of Lake Tahoe and was able to laugh when finding a description of someone a lot like him), figuring out what these people are on about is the rough equivalent of discovering the tombs of Tutankhamen, Rameses, and Nefertiti all at the same time, and finding incontrovertible proof that Anubis really DID carry their souls off to the realm of the dead in the process. It's true that any bright middle-school student who has a good grasp of fractions will be able to get Beat the Track, and praise the powers that be that Ziemba and Hausch are capable of translating this morass into something most people can understand, even if they only touched on a portion of one of Ziemba's papers (which is the first one presented here). If the middle-school student is really, REALLY bright, is what the classifieds today call a self-starter (read: willing to try and figure this stuff out on his own), and has access to a tutor and/or writings that can explain some of the more esoteric facts, and has six months or so free to decipher this stuff full-time, said bright middle-schooler can probably find the keys to the kingdom. And get a pretty solid understanding of econ jargon in the process (which could lead to blowing the curve in Freshman-level econ classes in a few years).

I've been considering going back to school and learning to be an accountant. Before I do so, I have every intention of acquiring a copy of this hefty tome, which will likely set me back a year's tuition or more, and using it so I, too, can blow the curve. Of course, if it helps me make enough money to pay for school in the process, that would be quite a bonus, but the real value here is in showing, once and for all, that depending on your point of view, either horse race investing is no more a gamble than playing the stock market, or that playing the stock market is just as much a gamble as putting your two bucks on the nose of Glue Factory Refugee in the seventh at Charles Town on Friday night. *****

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Collection of ~60 Academic Papers, February 19, 2005

By	Fred Corsiglia (Abu Dhabi, UAE) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets (Economic Theory, Econometrics, and Mathematical Economics) (Hardcover)

This is a very difficult to locate title and you are likely to pay a significant price premium. I found my copy at Amazon.co.uk and it was a reverse bound photocopy of the manuscript, still carrying a premium price!

The book contains approximately 60 academic papers divided into seven categories. As academic papers, each of the paper goes into significant depth regarding narrow topics. The organization of the book attempts to bridge between the topics. Some of the papers are "classics" written as early as the 1940's. Papers include the classics by Harville, Hausch, Asch and Benter. The authors of the papers include mathematicians, psychologists and gamblers. Some value in the book is derived through identification of these authors to search for their other works. The bibliography and acknowledgements are uniquely useful.

Frankly, after reading the majority of the papers, I am not sure I understand the exhorbitant pricing for the book. I do not see any conclusions or recommendations that aren't contained in a range of handicapping books, and the individual papers are readily available to anyone willing to invest the time to research at a major technical library. The book is a good one, but not as great as the price would lead you to believe.

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read, July 28, 2000

By	Pete Lock (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets (Economic Theory, Econometrics, and Mathematical Economics) (Hardcover)

After reading and researching statistical techniques applied to horse racing this book is by far the most important and complete book I have read. The techniques are proven using complex math and statistical calculations and if repeated can earn a consistant and reasonable profit.