There are several arguments why the economic analysis of gambling seems to be very interesting. Gambling is a very important economic industry from which either local or national governments obtain resources due to some sort of fiscal imposition on gambling participation. On the other hand, the consumption of gambling seems to violate the premises of economic theory (risk aversion, maximizing and rational conduct). The empirical literature on this field has tried to answer several questions that might be summarized as follows: Who does gamble? Why do people gamble? And, how do game features, such as the rules or the prize structure, affect the demand for gambling? This thesis tries to shed more light on the questions identified above, focusing on the particular case of state-operated lotteries and football pools in Spain. Specifically, we are interested in examining what aspects drive gamblers' participation in Spanish lottery markets and spending on lotteries, focusing on network externalities in consumer spending on closely related lottery goods. Next, we study the demand for a particular game, paying attention to the factors that explain why individuals bet, especially, those that refer to the design of the game and the structure of prizes. Finally, the analysis of the main economic determinants of demand for gambling is extended to football pools as a particular form of sports gambling. In addition to these empirical exercises, this study contributes to the economics of gambling by briefly reviewing the theoretical work and empirical highlights from the previous analysis of the demand for lottery.

Due to the mature of networks and communication technologies, electronic commerce is growing up rapidly and many advanced applications in electronic commerce are developed recently, such as on-line shopping, on-line bidding, and on-line gambling. There are numerous types of gambling like typical lottery, sport lottery, and poker gambling where our research will focus on the lottery games. Because of some special characteristics of the lottery games such as fairness and anonymity, it is hard to design a perfect electronic lottery protocol. The transaction mechanism in an electronic lottery protocol is an important issue since it will affect the benefits of customers if it is not fair or secure. The generating of random winning numbers in a lottery game has been discussed in many papers, but the fairness and anonymity for purchasing tickets and claiming the prizes are only discussed in few papers where these previous results cannot completely cope with the problems of fairness and anonymity. In the thesis, we will propose two electronic lottery protocols that can achieve the fairness and perfect anonymity simultaneously.

The addition of random selection to our arsenal of methods for selecting political officials would enhance performance against norms of representative democracy. I employ historical and analytic methods to explore the nature of sortition and its relation to political equality, rational decision-making, and legitimate representation. Sortition both expresses a democratic commitment to political equality and facilitates improved performance under this democratic norm. It can be rational to eschew reasons in the process of selecting political officials, and decision-making bodies chosen randomly can be expected to make good decisions. I also address concerns stemming from representative norms, surrounding random selection of officials, arguing that random selection can enhance the resemblance and responsiveness of representatives. Finally, I detail some possibilities for institutional arrangements that would deliver the benefits of sortition while addressing the challenges it presents. / text

This dissertation consists of three essays on the role of social values in financial markets. Chapter 1 uses geographic variation in religious concentration to identify the effect of people's gambling behavior in financial market settings. We argue that religious background predicts people's gambling propensity, and that gambling propensity carries over into their behavior in financial markets. We test this conjecture in various financial market settings and find that the predominant local religion predicts variation in investors' propensity to hold stocks with lottery features, in the prevalence of broad-based employee stock option plans, in first-day returns to initial public offerings, and in the magnitude of the negative lottery-stock return premium. Collectively, our findings indicate that religious beliefs regarding the acceptability of gambling impact investors' portfolio choices, corporate decisions, and stock returns. In Chapter 2 I examine the impact of social norms against holding certain types of stocks (e.g. "sin stocks", or stocks with lottery features) on trading decisions and portfolio performance. I argue that trades which deviate from social norms are likely to reflect stronger information. Consistent with this hypothesis, I find that the most gambling-averse institutions earn high abnormal returns on their holdings of lottery stocks, outperforming the holdings of the most gambling-tolerant institutions. An analysis of institutions' sin stock holdings provides complementary evidence using another dimension of social norms, supporting the hypothesis that trades which deviate from norms reflect stronger information. In the third essay, we conjecture that people feel more optimistic about the economy and stock market when their own political party is in power. We find supporting evidence from Gallup survey data and analyze brokerage account data to confirm the impact of time-varying optimism on investors' portfolio choices. When the political climate is aligned with their political preferences, investors maintain higher systematic risk exposure while trading less frequently. When the opposite party is in power, investors exhibit stronger behavioral biases and make worse investment decisions. Investors improve their raw portfolio performance when their own party is in power, but the risk-adjusted improvement is economically small. / text

This thesis studies issues in auctions and contests. The seller of an object and the organizer of a contest have many instruments to improve the revenue of the auction or the efficiency of the contest. The three essays in this dissertation shed light on these issues. Chapter 2 investigates how a refund policy affects a buyer's strategic behavior by characterizing the equilibria of a second-price auction with a linear refund policy. I find that a generous refund policy induces buyers to bid aggressively. I also examine the optimal mechanism design problem when buyers only have private initial estimates of their valuations and may privately learn of shocks that affect their valuations later. When all buyers are \emph{ex-ante} symmetric, this optimal selling mechanism can be implemented by a first-price or second-price auction with a refund policy. Chapter 3 investigates how information revelation rules affect the existence and the efficiency of equilibria in two-round elimination contests. I establish that there exists no symmetric separating equilibrium under the full revelation rule and find that the non-existence result is very robust. I then characterize a partially efficient separating equilibrium under the partial revelation rule when players' valuations are uniformly distributed. I finally investigate the no revelation rule and find that it is both most efficient and optimal in maximizing the total efforts from the contestants. Within my framework, more information revelation leads to less efficient outcomes. Chapter 4 analyzes the signaling effect of bidding in a two-round elimination contest. Before the final round, bids in the preliminary round are revealed and act as signals of the contestants' private valuations. Compared to the benchmark model, in which private valuations are revealed automatically before the final round and thus no signaling of bids takes place, I find that strong contestants bluff and weak contestants sandbag. In a separating equilibrium, bids in the preliminary round fully reveal the contestants' private valuations. However, this signaling effect makes the equilibrium bidding strategy in the preliminary round steeper for high valuations and flatter for low valuations compared to the benchmark model. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-20 21:34:12.295

Thesis (Ph.D.). / Written for the Dept. of Geography. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/07/24). Includes bibliographical references.

摘要 研究動機與目的:在大數據的時代，為NBA籃球運彩迷們提供一些籃球數據的分析與模型，使其在購買台灣運彩時，能多些中獎的機率與樂趣。 研究方法:透過相關係數、迴歸來進行NBA籃球數據分析。 創新與推廣:相關係數與迴歸分析出來後，與NBA運彩應用結合，產生策略。 結論:預測數據部分最為困難，必須找出策略搭配預測數據之方法。 關鍵字: NBA運彩策略、迴歸、預測 / Abstract Motivation and purpose of this study: In the era of big data, provide NBA basketball fans with some analysis and models of basketball data, so that they can win more chances and fun when purchasing Taiwan NBA lottery. Method: NBA basketball data analysis is performed through correlation coefficient and regression. Innovation and promotion: After the correlation coefficient and regression analysis come out, it is combined with NBA lottery application to generate strategies. Conclusion: The prediction data part is the most difficult and it is necessary to find out the method of strategy matching the prediction data. Keywords: NBA lottery strategy, Regression, Predicting

Submitted by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2015-01-27T13:45:09Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Dissertação - Paulo Roberto de Oliveira - 2014.pdf: 3459807 bytes, checksum: b199bab67e773541a99d42adfc9dce03 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2015-01-28T11:28:00Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Dissertação - Paulo Roberto de Oliveira - 2014.pdf: 3459807 bytes, checksum: b199bab67e773541a99d42adfc9dce03 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-01-28T11:28:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Dissertação - Paulo Roberto de Oliveira - 2014.pdf: 3459807 bytes, checksum: b199bab67e773541a99d42adfc9dce03 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-07-11 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Many monthly, others weekly play in lottery games ignoring the randomness of the results, believing in luck or strategies that are sold to them in books about games. This monograph aims to show some concepts of probability and statistics unexplored in high school and also day to day situations that contain mathematical concepts of probability more accessible to this level of education showing some mathematical theories applied in practice games. Concepts will be discussed here: some probability distributions, their hope and variance, as well as lottery games and their probability calculations. Probability distributions will be calculated and listed in situations created from models of urns with two colors of balls, always having green as the color whose extraction will be considered successful and the red, whose extraction will be considered a failure. Now extractions with replacement balls will be made and sometimes extractions will be done without replacing them. Also, there is the case where new balls are added to both colors or one color. / Muitos jogam mensalmente, outros semanalmente, em jogos de loterias desconhecendo a aleatoriedade dos seus resultados, acreditando na sorte ou em estratégias que lhes são vendidas em livros sobre jogos. A presente monogra a tem como objetivo mostrar alguns conceitos da Probabilidade e Estatística não explorados no Ensino Médio e também situações do dia a dia que contenham conceitos matemáticos sobre Probabilidade mais acessíveis a este nível de ensino, mostrando um pouco de teorias matemáticas aplicadas na prática de jogos. Serão conceitos aqui discutidos: algumas distribuições de probabilidade, sua esperan ça e variância, além de jogos de loterias e seus cálculos de probabilidade. As distribuições de probabilidade serão enunciadas e calculadas em situações criadas a partir de modelos de urnas com duas cores de bolas, tendo sempre o verde como a cor cuja extração será considerada sucesso e, o vermelho, cuja extração será considerada insucesso. Ora serão feitas extrações com reposições das bolas e ora serão feitas extrações sem a reposição das mesmas. Também, há o caso em que serão adicionadas novas bolas de ambas as cores ou uma cor apenas.

In the first essay titled “Monthly Cyclicality in Retail Investors’ Liquidity and Lottery-type Stocks at the Turn of the Month”, we find that the well-documented underperformance of lottery stocks masks a within-month cyclical pattern. Demand for lottery stocks increases at the turn of the month especially in areas whose demographic profile resembles that of the typical lottery-ticket buyers (i.e., gamblers) driving their prices higher at the turn of the month. This effect is particularly pronounced among firms located in areas whose demographic profile resembles that of the typical lottery-ticket buyer and propelled by the within-month cyclicality of local investors’ personal liquidity positions. A long-short investment strategy based on this cyclical pattern of lottery stocks performance yields gross abnormal returns of about 15% per year. In the second essay titled “Lottery-type Stocks and Corporate Strategies at the Turn of the Month”, we test whether cyclical demand for lottery stocks by retail investors, that tends to peak at the turn-of-the-month (ToM), affects firms’ financial activities. Consistent with the notion that the peak in demand is driven by a propensity to gamble and is associated with inattention, we find underreaction to earnings news issued at the ToM by lottery-type firms located in areas with many gambling investors. We also find that the ToM also provides a window of opportunity for SEO issuing lottery-type firms. Such issuing firms may strategically choose to issue lottery-type stocks at the ToM to save the direct marketing costs because it flattens the elasticity of pre-offer demand curve.

The thesis presents a reformative criticism of science funding by peer review. The criticism is based on epistemological scepticism, regarding the ability of scientific peers, or any other agent, to have access to sufficient information regarding the potential of proposed projects at the time of funding. The scepticism is based on the complexity of factors contributing to the merit of scientific projects, and the rate at which the parameters of this complex system change their values. By constructing models of different science funding mechanisms, a construction supported by historical evidence, computational simulations show that in a significant subset of cases it would be better to select research projects by a lottery mechanism than by selection based on peer review. This last result is used to create a template for an alternative funding mechanism that combines the merits of peer review with the benefits of random allocation, while noting that this alternative is not so far removed from current practice as may first appear.