IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v109y2010i3p161-163.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On lottery sales, jackpot sizes and irrationality: A cautionary note

Author

Listed:
  • Peel, D.A.

Abstract

Jackpot size has a greater impact than expected price as a determinant of lottery sales suggesting that agents exhibit irrational lotto mania. We demonstrate why this conclusion is problematical by considering the reduced form obtained if agents are described by Cumulative Prospect Theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Peel, D.A., 2010. "On lottery sales, jackpot sizes and irrationality: A cautionary note," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 161-163, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:109:y:2010:i:3:p:161-163
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1765(10)00284-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shlomo Benartzi & Richard H. Thaler, 1995. "Myopic Loss Aversion and the Equity Premium Puzzle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 73-92.
    2. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    3. Atanu Saha, 1993. "Expo-Power Utility: A ‘Flexible’ Form for Absolute and Relative Risk Aversion," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 75(4), pages 905-913.
    4. Beenstock, Michael & Haitovsky, Yoel, 2001. "Lottomania and other anomalies in the market for lotto," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 721-744, December.
    5. David Forrest & Robert Simmons & Neil Chesters, 2002. "Buying a Dream: Alternative Models of Demand for Lotto," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(3), pages 485-496, July.
    6. Cook, Philip J & Clotfelter, Charles T, 1993. "The Peculiar Scale Economies of Lotto," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 634-643, June.
    7. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    8. Walker, Ian & Young, Juliet, 2001. "An Economist's Guide to Lottery Design," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(475), pages 700-722, November.
    9. Enrico Giorgi & Thorsten Hens, 2006. "Making prospect theory fit for finance," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 20(3), pages 339-360, September.
    10. Quiggin, John, 1991. "On the Optimal Design of Lotteries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 58(229), pages 1-16, February.
    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. Gabrielyan, Gnel & Just, David R., 2017. "Economic Factors Affecting Lottery Sales: An Examination of Maine State Lottery Sales," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258419, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. repec:cup:judgdm:v:16:y:2021:i:4:p:1039-1059 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Lena C. Quilty & Daniela S. S. Lobo & Martin Zack & Courtney Crewe-Brown & Alexander Blaszczynski, 2016. "Hitting the jackpot: the influence of monetary payout on gambling behaviour," International Gambling Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 481-499, September.
    4. Brian A. Polin & Eyal Ben Isaac & Itzhak Aharon, 2021. "Patterns in manually selected numbers in the Israeli lottery," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(4), pages 1039-1059, July.
    5. Kent Grote & Victor Matheson, 2011. "The Economics of Lotteries: An Annotated Bibliography," Working Papers 1110, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.

    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. Peel, D.A. & Zhang, Jie, 2009. "The expo-power value function as a candidate for the work-horse specification in parametric versions of cumulative prospect theory," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(3), pages 326-329, December.
    2. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    3. Santos-Pinto, Luís & Astebro, Thomas & Mata, José, 2009. "Preference for Skew in Lotteries: Evidence from the Laboratory," MPRA Paper 17165, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. D. A. Peel & Jie Zhang & D. Law, 2008. "The Markowitz model of utility supplemented with a small degree of probability distortion as an explanation of outcomes of Allais experiments over large and small payoffs and gambling on unlikely outc," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 17-26.
    5. Walther Herbert, 2005. "Optimal Taxation of Gambling and Lotto," Working Papers geewp47, Vienna University of Economics and Business Research Group: Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness.
    6. 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.
    7. Alexis DIRER, 2010. "Equilibrium Lottery Games and Preferences Under Risk," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 550, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    8. David Peel & David Law, 2007. "Betting on odds on Favorites as an Optimal Choice in Cumulative Prospect Theory," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(26), pages 1-10.
    9. Hofer, Vera & Leitner, Johannes, 2011. "Should European gamblers play lotto in the USA?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 215(1), pages 181-187, November.
    10. Peel, D.A. & Zhang, Jie, 2012. "On the potential for observational equivalence in experiments on risky choice when a power value function is assumed," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 8-10.
    11. Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe Kortajarene & Giovanni Ponti & Josefa Tomás Lucas, 2015. "Some (Mis)facts about Myopic Loss Aversion," Working Papers. Serie AD 2015-09, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    12. Kazi Iqbal & Asad Islam & John List & Vy Nguyen, 2021. "Myopic Loss Aversion and Investment Decisions: From the Laboratory to the Field," Framed Field Experiments 000730, The Field Experiments Website.
    13. Simone Cerreia‐Vioglio & David Dillenberger & Pietro Ortoleva, 2015. "Cautious Expected Utility and the Certainty Effect," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 693-728, March.
    14. Mao, Luke Lunhua & Zhang, James J. & Connaughton, Daniel P., 2015. "Sports gambling as consumption: Evidence from demand for sports lottery," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 436-447.
    15. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    16. Bocqueho, Geraldine & Jacquet, Florence & Reynaud, Arnaud, 2011. "Expected Utility or Prospect Theory Maximizers? Results from a Structural Model based on Field-experiment Data," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114257, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    17. Alserda, Gosse A.G. & Dellaert, Benedict G.C. & Swinkels, Laurens & van der Lecq, Fieke S.G., 2019. "Individual pension risk preference elicitation and collective asset allocation with heterogeneity," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 206-225.
    18. Enrico G. De Giorgi & Thierry Post, 2011. "Loss Aversion with a State-Dependent Reference Point," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(6), pages 1094-1110, June.
    19. Jonathan Chapman & Erik Snowberg & Stephanie Wang & Colin Camerer, 2018. "Loss Attitudes in the U.S. Population: Evidence from Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation (DOSE)," NBER Working Papers 25072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Schunk, Daniel, 2009. "Behavioral heterogeneity in dynamic search situations: Theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1719-1738, September.

    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:eee:ecolet:v:109:y:2010:i:3:p:161-163. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.