Economist says Rose's insider info didn't produce winning wagers

[Unassisted]

http://www.nysun.com/blogs/economics...better-in.html

Why Pete Rose Didn't Fare Better in His Bets

Posted by Colin Gustafson
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 at 10:17 AM

Insider knowledge doesn't always bring a higher payoff — especially when inside experts try to cheat in a market full of other, well-informed participants.

That's the conclusion of a paper written by a Rutgers University economist, Douglas Coate, and posted yesterday on the Marginal Utility blog
(http://atbozzo.blogspot.com).

Examining the baseball bets of a disgraced former Cincinnati Reds manager, Pete Rose, Mr. Coate found that Mr. Rose lost $47,200 on bad wagers on the performance of dozens of Major League Baseball teams in April-May 1987. More than $4,000 of those losses were from bad bets on his own team.

So how could this major league insider with nearly three decades of experience in baseball lose so much money to gamblers who had never played the sport professionally, and had no access to any of the league's players or coaches?

Mr. Coate suggests that Mr. Rose, even as a baseball insider, did not possess as significant an informational advantage as he might have thought. In fact, the famed athlete probably failed as a gambler because he was participating in an "informational-efficient market," where other gamblers knew as much as he did about teams' strengths and weaknesses.

Mr. Rose's expertise was not an "advantage when betting on his own team, on other teams in his league that he studied and competed against, or on teams in the other leagues," the author writes.

That, or he was just unlucky: In some cases, Mr. Rose "was a better gambler when he didn't have access to information," the blogger behind Marginal Utility, Kenneth Houghton, writes.

Whatever the case, Mr. Rose's losses in the betting market provide a lesson for participants in the financial markets, Mr. Coates suggests. "The team sports betting markets provide another test of how well markets process information," the economist writes.

"Markets are efficient if the prices of the individual stock at any moment in time reflect all that is known by market participants."

[camisadelgolf]

No harm, no foul. Let's go ahead and get this part of the discussion out of the way . . .

Let him in the Hall!

[BCubb2003]

I've said this before. You're not betting on the game. You're betting on the bookie's game, and he's using your money.

[PuffyPig]

Originally Posted by camisadelgolf

No harm, no foul. Let's go ahead and get this part of the discussion out of the way . . .

Let him in the Hall!

No one ever suggested that him profiting from gambling was ever at issue or even relevent. And it wasn't and isn't.

[princeton]

Pete's a loser?

[Team Clark]

Now that this is all cleared up..... When is he eligible for the Hall?

[redsrule2500]

My take on the Pete thing is that if Barry and steroid friends are allowed in baseball, so should he. They disgrace the game and it affects their play.

I would be fine with accepting Pete's banishment if Barry and friends were also banished.