Gambling at Lucky Stores: Empirical Evidence from State Lottery Sales

Jonathan Guryan and Melissa Kearney

American Economic Review, 2008, vol. 98, issue 1, 458-73

Abstract: We show that the week after selling a large-prize Texas Lotto winning ticket, a retailer experiences a 12 to 38 percent relative increase in ticket sales. Some increase persists for up to 40 weeks. We document that the sales response increases with jackpot size and is larger in areas with more economically disadvantaged populations. Sales patterns across games and across retailers are not consistent with most advertising explanations. Furthermore, response patterns are not consistent with representativeness-based explanations for the hot hand or gambler's fallacy; we suggest an alternative explanation for the observed "lucky store" effect. (JEL H27, H71)

JEL-codes: H27 H71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.1.458
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (70)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.98.1.458 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/mar08/20050694_data.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:98:y:2008:i:1:p:458-73

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().