IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v22y1994i2p258-264.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Upping the Ante for Lotto: a Strategy for Enhancing State Revenues

Author

Listed:
  • John F. Scoggins

    (University of Florida)

Abstract

Many state lottery agencies operate a numbers game in which a grand prize accumulates (i.e. "rolls over") until at least one player wins it. This type of game is usually called a "lotto. " This article investigates the possibility of enhancing net revenues from a lotto by artificially increasing the expected grand prize amount with funds not generated by the game itself. Using data from the Florida Lotto, a time series regression for weekly ticket sales is estimated. Also introduced is a limited dependent variable model to estimate the probability that the grand prize will roll over as afunction of ticket sales. This model is based on a variation of the binomial distribution. The findings are that net revenues can be increased by artificially increasing the grand prize, but the timing of the increase has a large impact on the expected rate of return.

Suggested Citation

  • John F. Scoggins, 1994. "Upping the Ante for Lotto: a Strategy for Enhancing State Revenues," Public Finance Review, , vol. 22(2), pages 258-264, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:22:y:1994:i:2:p:258-264
    DOI: 10.1177/109114219402200206
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109114219402200206
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/109114219402200206?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Borg, Mary O. & Mason, Paul M., 1988. "The Budgetary Incidence of a Lottery to Support Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 41(1), pages 75-85, March.
    2. Gulley, O. David & Scott, Frank A. Jr., 1989. "Lottery Effects on Pari-Mutuel Tax Revenues," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 42(1), pages 89-93, March.
    3. Thiel, Stuart E., 1991. "Policy, Participation and Revenue in Washington State Lotto," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 44(2), pages 225-35, June.
    4. John E. Filer & Donald L. Moak & Barry Uze, 1988. "Why Some States Adopt Lotteries and others Don'T," Public Finance Review, , vol. 16(3), pages 259-283, July.
    5. Borg, Mary O. & Mason, Paul M., 1988. "The Budgetary Incidence of a Lottery to Support Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 41(1), pages 75-85, March.
    6. Gulley, O. David & Scott, Frank A. Jr., 1989. "Lottery Effects on Pari-Mutuel Tax Revenues," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 42(1), pages 89-93, March.
    7. Thaler, Richard H & Ziemba, William T, 1988. "Parimutuel Betting Markets: Racetracks and Lotteries," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 161-174, Spring.
    8. Thiel, Stuart E., 1991. "Policy, Participation and Revenue in Washington State Lotto," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 44(2), pages 225-235, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Terry Ashley & Yi Liu & Semoon Chang, 1999. "Estimating net lottery revenues for states," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 27(2), pages 170-178, June.
    2. Scoggins, John F., 1995. "The Lotto and Expected Net Revenue," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 48(1), pages 61-70, March.
    3. Scoggins, John F., 1995. "The Lotto and Expected Net Revenue," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 48(1), pages 61-70, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kent Grote & Victor Matheson, 2011. "The Economics of Lotteries: A Survey of the Literature," Working Papers 1109, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    2. Humphreys, Brad & Perez, Levi, 2011. "Lottery Participants and Revenues: An International Survey of Economic Research on Lotteries," Working Papers 2011-17, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    3. Kent Grote & Victor Matheson, 2011. "The Economics of Lotteries: An Annotated Bibliography," Working Papers 1110, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    4. Andrew C. Worthington & Kerry Brown & Mary Crawford & David Pickernell, 2003. "Socioeconomic And Demographic Determinants Of Household Gambling In Australia," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 156, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
    5. Julie Smith, 1999. "Australian Gambling Taxation," CEPR Discussion Papers 402, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    6. Andrew Worthington & Kerry Brown & Mary Crawford & David Pickernell, 2007. "Gambling participation in Australia: findings from the national Household Expenditure Survey," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 209-221, June.
    7. Andrew C. Worthington, 2001. "Implicit Finance in Gambling Expenditures: Australian Evidence on Socioeconomic and Demographic Tax Incidence," Public Finance Review, , vol. 29(4), pages 326-342, July.
    8. Kearney, Melissa Schettini, 2005. "State lotteries and consumer behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2269-2299, December.
    9. Anthony C. Krautmann & James E. Ciecka, 1993. "When Are State Lotteries a Good Bet?," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 157-164, Spring.
    10. Terry Ashley & Yi Liu & Semoon Chang, 1999. "Estimating net lottery revenues for states," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 27(2), pages 170-178, June.
    11. Thomas A. Garrett & Russell S. Sobel, 2004. "State Lottery Revenue: The Importance of Game Characteristics," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(3), pages 313-330, May.
    12. Levi Pérez & Brad R. Humphreys, 2011. "The Income Elasticity of Lottery: New Evidence from Micro Data," Public Finance Review, , vol. 39(4), pages 551-570, July.
    13. Cabreales, Antonio & Calvo-Armengol, Antoni & Jackson, Matthew O., 2003. "La Crema: A Case Study of Mutual Fire Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(2), pages 425-458, April.
    14. Rubenstein, Ross & Scafidi, Benjamin, 2002. "Who Pays and Who Benefits? Examining the Distributional Consequences of the Georgia Lottery for Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 55(N. 2), pages 223-238, June.
    15. Harriet A. Stranahan & Mary O. Borg, 1998. "Separating the Decisions of Lottery Expenditures and Participation: a Truncated Tobit Approach," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(2), pages 99-117, March.
    16. Skidmore, Mark & Serkan Tosun, Mehmet, 2008. "Do New Lottery Games Stimulate Retail Activity? Evidence from West Virginia Counties," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 38(1), pages 1-11.
    17. Michael Coon & Gwyneth Whieldon, 2016. "Elasticity of Demand and Optimal Prize Distribution for Instant Lottery Games," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 44(4), pages 457-469, December.
    18. Harriet A. Stranahan & Mary O. Borg, 2004. "Some Futures are Brighter than Others: the Net Benefits Received by Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Recipients," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(1), pages 105-126, January.
    19. William C. Rivenbark, 1998. "The Tax Incidence of Casino Gaming in Mississippi," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(6), pages 583-598, November.
    20. Victor Matheson & Kent Grote, 2009. "Spreading the Fortune: The Distribution of Lottery Prizes across Countries," Working Papers 0904, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:22:y:1994:i:2:p:258-264. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.