Search Results
Journal Article
Casinos shakeout was mild, upswing expected for Mississippi
Journal Article
Not a great bet
Lotteries and other forms of government-sanctioned gambling have spread rapidly across the Ninth District. What kind of jackpot do they really deliver to state and local governments?
Working Paper
Risk taking and the quality of informal insurance: gambling and remittances in Thailand
More than 35% of Thai households either give or receive remittances, and remittances account for about one-third of the income of the receiving households. Remittance relationships may be an important source of protection against adverse events for the individuals involved. This paper provides evidence that remittances behave in a way that is consistent with insurance: they are sensitive to shocks to regional rainfall and they respond to household level events. The paper goes on to consider how the quality of insurance that is offered through remittances affects household risk taking ...
Working Paper
Smoke-free law did affect revenue from gaming in Delaware
A paper recently published in the journal Tobacco Control purports to show that the implementation of a smoking prohibition in Delaware had no statistically significant effect on the revenues of three gaming facilities in that state. After correcting for evident errors in that analysis, I find that the smoke-free law did affect revenues from gaming in Delaware. Total gaming revenues are estimated to have declined by at least $6 million per month after the implementation of Delaware*s Clean Indoor Air Law. This represents a loss of over 12% relative to average monthly revenues in the year ...
Working Paper
No smoking at the slot machines: the effect of a smoke-free law on Delaware gaming revenues
As communities around the nation consider laws restricting smoking in public places, a key political and economic issue that often arises is the effect that such laws have on the sales and profits of particular sectors. The gaming industry has been active in opposition to such ordinances, citing large prospective losses. This article analyzes the revenues of three gaming facilities in Delaware following the implementation of a smoke-free law in December 2002. Revenues are found to have declined significantly at each of the three facilities, with relative magnitudes of losses corresponding to ...
Working Paper
Inter-temporal differences in the income elasticity of demand for lottery tickets
We estimate annual income elasticities of demand for lottery tickets using roughly twenty years of county-level data for three states. We find that the income elasticity of demand (and thus the tax burden) for lottery tickets has changed over time. We argue that these changes are due to changes in a state's lottery game portfolio and the growth in consumer income. Trends in the income elasticity of demand for instant and online lottery games appear to be different. Our results question the long-term growth potential of lottery revenue and have policy implications for state governments and ...
Working Paper
Income and lottery sales: transfers trump income from work and wealth
Previous studies have examined the effect of income on lottery ticket expenditures using an aggregate measure of income, usually personal income. Reasons exist, however, for believing that lottery expenditures do not respond equally to all sources of income. This paper examines the propensity to purchase lottery tickets from separate types of income, namely income from earnings, transfer payments, and wealth. Using county-level data for five states, we find evidence that lottery expenditures respond differently to changes in each income type, and that ticket purchases are most strongly ...
Working Paper
Casino revenue and the Illinois smoking ban
Smoking was banned in all Illinois casinos in January 2008. We explore the effects that the smoking ban has had on Illinois casino revenue and attendance. Our empirical methodology extends and enhances that of previous literature in that we observe a natural experiment in comparing the performance of Illinois casinos with out-of-state casinos (no smoking ban) that share a market with Illinois casinos. Estimates suggest that revenue and admissions at Illinois casinos declined by more than 20 percent ($400 million) and 12 percent, respectively. Calculations reveal that casino tax revenue to ...
Working Paper
Do casinos export bankruptcy?
This paper measures the extent to which destination resort casinos export bankruptcy back to visitors' home states. Previous literature has alluded to this possibility, but to date studies have only examined the influence of local casinos on local bankruptcy. Using various survey data, we calculate the number of visits from each state to casino resort destinations in Nevada, New Jersey, and Mississippi. We find strong evidence that states having more residents who visit out-of-state casino resorts have higher bankruptcy filings. This effect is dominant in the south, suggesting that casinos ...