Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Professional football: historical development and economic structure
- 3 Competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome
- 4 The labour and transfer markets
- 5 The contribution of the football manager
- 6 Managerial change and team performance
- 7 The demand for football attendance
- 8 Information transmission and efficiency: share prices and fixed-odds betting
- 9 Professional football: current issues and future prospects
- List of references
- Index
8 - Information transmission and efficiency: share prices and fixed-odds betting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Professional football: historical development and economic structure
- 3 Competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome
- 4 The labour and transfer markets
- 5 The contribution of the football manager
- 6 Managerial change and team performance
- 7 The demand for football attendance
- 8 Information transmission and efficiency: share prices and fixed-odds betting
- 9 Professional football: current issues and future prospects
- List of references
- Index
Summary
One of the most influential and durable propositions of neoclassical economics is the idea that the interactions between large numbers of buyers and sellers operating in free, unregulated markets, each taking spontaneous and uncoordinated decisions in pursuit of their own self-interest, can normally be relied upon to deliver an efficient allocation of scarce resources. The originator of this notion was Adam Smith, whose ‘invisible hand’ metaphor, first articulated The Wealth of Nations published in 1776, represents one of the most spectacular intellectual achievements of the late-eighteenth-century Scottish enlightenment. A key assumption of the many theoretical models that have since been developed to formalise Smith's brilliant insight is that all relevant information about the prices and characteristics of tradeable commodities is transmitted rapidly and accurately among buyers and sellers. Otherwise, trade that takes place on the basis of incomplete or inaccurate information may well lead to a misallocation of resources.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, investigating the speed and efficiency with which relevant information is impounded into the prices at which trade takes place in markets is of considerable interest to economists and others. Its importance is not purely theoretical, for the reasons outlined above, but also highly practical. If relevant information is available to some traders but not to others, the well informed can exploit their informational advantage to trade with the uninformed at prices which the latter would not accept if they had access to the same information.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Economics of Football , pp. 373 - 417Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001