TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cook,Philip J.
AU  - Clotfelter,Charles T.
TI  - The Peculiar Scale Economies of Lotto
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3766
PY  - 1991
Y2  - July 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3766
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3766.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Philip J. Cook
Sanford School of Public Policy
Duke University
215 Sanford Building
Durham, NC 27708-0245
Tel: 919 613 7360
Fax:  919/681-8288
E-Mail: pcook@duke.edu

Charles T. Clotfelter
Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Box 90245 Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
Tel: 919/613-7361
E-Mail: charles.clotfelter@duke.edu
AB  - The best-selling lottery game in the United States is lotto, a parimutuel game of long odds and large jackpots. Unlike in the other popular lottery games (numbers and instant). there is a strong tendency for per-capita lotto sales to increase with the size of the population base. The fact that the jackpot also tends to increase with population size is not a complete explanation, since the probability of winning tends to be inversely proportional to state population. our explanation for why the games are more successful in large states is that players tend to judge the likelihood of winning based on the frequency with which someone wins; then a larger state can offer a game at longer odds but the same perceived probability of winning as a smaller state.
ER  -