Bettors Love Skewness, Not Risk, at the Horse Track
赛马投注中,低概率高方差赌注回报低,高概率低方差赌注回报高,传统认为赌徒爱风险;但本研究指出,考虑回报偏度后,数据同样支持风险厌恶,赌徒真正追求的是偏度。
Studies of horse race betting have empirically established a long shot anomaly; that is, low‐probabiliy, high‐variance bets (long shots) provide low mean returns and high‐probability, lowvariance bets provide relatively high mean returns. Because bettors willingly accept low‐return, high‐variance bets, researchers conclude that bettors are risk lovers. In this study, we show that the data are at least as consistent with risk aversion as they are with risk loving when one explicitly considers the skewness of bet returns. Because the variance and skewness of bet returns are highly correlated, bettors may appear to prefer variance when it is skewness that they crave.