La demande de grilles d'Euromillions. Une comparaison internationale

We analyze the demand of Euromillions lottery tickets, a European lotto-like game launched in 2004 and played simultaneously in nine countries with the same rules and the same draws. Using first the effective price methodology, we show that price elasticities are very different across countries. Especially, Spain and Portugal exhibit a low price elasticity and high mean sales, meaning a low sensitivity to jackpot increases. On the contrary, Ireland and the United Kingdom exhibit a very high long-run elasticity and a large sensitivity to jackpot variations. The interpretation of these results is linked to lower per capita gdp in the two former countries, to the large development of syndication play in Spain and to the special tax regime in Portugal. For uk and Ireland, bookmaking activities and the highly competitive betting market partly explain the results. We then show that cumulative prospect theory (Tversky and Kahneman [1992]), though allowing to explain participation to the lottery, does not improve the estimation of the demand function. Classification JEL : D81, H71