IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/umb/econwp/1307.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Slot Machine Payback Percentages: The Devil is in the Moment

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Farrow

    (UMBC)

  • Jackson Costa

    (UMBC)

Abstract

The average payback percentage from slot machines is important to gamblers, casinos, and governments. While apparently simple to define several complications can exist, among them which measure to average and potentially misleading formulas to calculate the average. Daily slot machine data from the state of Maryland for 19 months are analyzed for the expected value of the average payback ratio per machine and per dollar gambled. On a per dollar gambled basis, the payback percentage meets legislative requirements that the gaming floor payback at least 90 percent. On a per machine basis, that requirement is not met which can imply a significant shift of money from gamblers to casino operators and the state. Other payback measures are hypothesized to also be less than the per-dollar gambled measure but data are lacking.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Farrow & Jackson Costa, 2013. "Slot Machine Payback Percentages: The Devil is in the Moment," UMBC Economics Department Working Papers 13-07, UMBC Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:umb:econwp:1307
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.umbc.edu/economics/wpapers/wp_13_07.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    slot machine; risk measures; government revenue;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism

    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:umb:econwp:1307. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Christelle Viauroux (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edumbus.html .

    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.