In October 2001, the U.K. government implemented a dramatic shift in the taxation of gambling, resulting in a substantial decline in taxes levied on U.K. bookmakers. Using data before and after this event, we present econometric evidence on the demand response to this tax reduction. Our results...

Although gambling is one of the fastest-growing service industries, there have been no studies of total factor productivity (TFP) in this sector. We attempt to fill this gap using establishmentlevel data from the United Kingdom. We also discuss key measurement issues in calculating gambling...

In recent years, person-to-person wagering on Internet ‘betting exchanges’ (sometimes known as ‘matched betting’) has become an increasingly important medium for betting on horse racing, sports and special events. Established gambling operators have argued that betting exchanges should...

The use of the GARCH-class of models is commonplace when examining stock market returns. In this paper we use data on stock markets in two transition economies to demonstrate the importance of using the correct GARCH specification. When returns are characterised by ‘fat tails’ or kurtosis...

In this paper we test the hypothesis that bookmakers display superior skills to bettors in predicting the outcome of sporting events by using matched data from traditional bookmaking and person-to-person exchanges. Employing a conditional logistic regression model on horse racing data from the...

In this paper, we examine a relatively novel form of gambling, index (or spread) betting, that mirrors (and indeed overlaps with) practices in conventional financial markets. In this form of betting, a number of bookmakers quote a bid-offer spread about the result of some future event, and...