Should Gambling Markets be Privatized? An Examination of State Lotteries in the United States

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

No 1303, Working Papers from College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics

Abstract: State lotteries currently operate in 43 states across the US. Recently, three states have privatized their lottery operations, handing over the management of their lotteries to private companies in hopes of generating greater revenues for the state governments. Questions arise regarding the economic rationale for this decision and an economic model is presented to determine whether one state, Illinois, has been successful at generating more state transfer revenues as a result of privatization in its first year of results. The issue of lottery privatization is also examined in the larger context of overall growth in the gambling industry in the United States with particular attention paid to sports gambling.

Keywords: lotto; lottery; public finance; gambling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 H71 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2013-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Sports and Betting, Plácido Rodríguez, Brad Humphreys, and Robert Simmons, eds., (London: Edward Elgar, 2017), Pages 21-37.

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https://hcapps.holycross.edu/hcs/RePEc/hcx/HC1303- ... on_Privatization.pdf (application/pdf)

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Chapter: Should gambling markets be privatized? An examination of state lotteries in the United States (2017)
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