This paper examines the determinants of the diffusion of state lotteries as a process of policy innovation. After more than 100 years of prohibition, U.S. states began to establish lotteries in the 1960s. The article uses statistical event history analysis to show that the adoption and diffusion...

In most rich democracies one finds a tendency for the share in public finance that is available for discretionary spending to shrink. This is because tax revenues do not keep pace with simultaneous increases in fixed expenditures and growing pressures for fiscal consolidation. The present paper...