Some Evidence of the Efficiency of a Speculative Market

AbstractIt is well known that the returns on various betting opportunities at a racetrack are determined by a competitive bidding of the bettors in a natural environment of their decision making. In this paper, two simple bets of unknown but identical winning probabilities are identified. An analysis of 1,089 observations shows the data are consistent with the hypothesis that both bets are identically priced, an implication of an efficient speculative market.