The Impact of State Lotteries and Casinos on State Bankruptcy Filings

Kent Grote () and Victor Matheson
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Kent Grote: Department of Economics and Business, Lake Forest College

No 1302, Working Papers from College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics

Abstract: Over the past half century, there has been an increasing prevalence of legalized gambling in the US. At the same time there is a general recognition, empirically supported in the economics literature, that spending on lottery and gaming products tends to be regressive in nature. In addition, gambling addiction is a widely acknowledged social problem. This raises the question of whether the increased presence of casinos and state lotteries results in relatively more bankruptcy filings in the states that offer them. This paper adds to the existing literature by comparing the relative impact of the presence of lotteries to that of casinos on both personal and business bankruptcies. States that adopted lotteries and casinos prior to 1995 experienced significantly higher personal bankruptcy rates while the effect of lottery and casino adoption on personal bankruptcies has disappeared since that time.

Keywords: lotto; lottery; public finance; gambling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H71 K35 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2013-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Growth and Change, Volume 45, Number 1, March 2014, Pages 121-135

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https://hcapps.holycross.edu/hcs/RePEc/hcx/HC1302- ... otteryBankruptcy.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of State Lotteries and Casinos on State Bankruptcy Filings (2014)
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