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Purpose: As digital technologies expand access to new forms of legalized gambling, including sports betting and online gaming, it is important to assess the impact of macroeconomic and equity market outcomes on fund flows into gambling. The authors' findings will be of interest to policymakers and the gambling industry, as various forms of gambling, including day trading, gain broad public acceptance. Design/methodology/approach: The authors examine the impact of macroeconomic forces, business cycles, and financial market wealth on gambling. The authors propose a nonlinear model linking aggregate gambling expenditures to macroeconomic, stock market, and gambling industry variables. The authors estimate the proposed model using nonlinear estimation procedures. Findings: The authors find that price of wagering, incomes, and supply of gambling opportunities are the primary determinants of wagering demand. Aggregate wagering is negatively impacted by realized stock returns and market volatility, but rises during recessions. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, the questions posed and addressed in this manuscript have not been addressed in prior literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarly articles consistently show that economic complexity promotes economic development. However, upon further examination of the literature, it becomes evident that macroeconomic determinants of economic complexity are not fully investigated, particularly in Africa. This study addressed this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of international tourism arrivals, infrastructural development, and trade openness on economic complexity in Africa. The study utilized the dynamic system GMM and panel Fixed Effects estimators for 34 African economies from 2010 to 2021. The results indicated that international tourism arrival and trade openness have beneficial effects on economic complexity in Africa, while the effects of infrastructural development remained mainly negative. Additionally, we established that human capital development and foreign direct investment inflow are potent channels for promoting economic complexity on the continent. We highlighted the policy implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the impact of tourism arrivals on a host country's output gap, defined as the difference between actual gross domestic product (GDP) and trend GDP. Using panel data methods that account for the potential endogeneity of tourism and the business cycle, and the possible nonstationarity of tourism arrivals, the results show that an increase in tourism arrivals significantly improves the output gap of the host country. Quantitatively, a 10% increase in arrivals in a given year improves the output gap in that year by approximately 0.2% of actual GDP. There is, however, no evidence of a lagged effect of tourism. Based on this empirical evidence, the article concludes that tourism is a mechanism through which the domestic economy can take advantage of positive shocks happening elsewhere in the world. In this sense, tourism can contribute to the synchronization of business cycles between destination and origin countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of studies reveal that tourism industry makes a substantial contribution towards socioeconomic growth and development of tourism led economies. However, tourism steered economic growth and development is achieved at the cost of environmental pollution and degradation. The main objective of this study is to examine the effect of tourists’ arrivals on environmental pollution caused by Carbon Dioxide emissions in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore over the period of 1990–2014. Some other regressors namely energy consumption and income are also used in the multivariate model. The Zivot–Andrews test is employed to determine unit-root and presence of structural break in the data. Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares estimator is used as an analytical technique for unknown parameters estimation. The empirical results reveal that tourism has a significant positive effect on environmental pollution in Malaysia. However, an inverse relationship between tourism and environmental pollution is observed in Thailand and Singapore. Empirical findings suggest that sustainable economic growth and development should be ensured by implementing prudent public policy where host governments must strive to promote socially and environmentally responsible tourism industries in their respective countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes a high frequency dataset on taxi rides in New York City to investigate how emotions due to sporting event outcomes affect passengers’ tipping behavior. I formulate and empirically test a reference-dependent preferences framework of tipping behavior. The results indicate that the tipping amounts are driven by deviations from expectations much more so than wins and losses, with the most salient effects found under unexpected close wins. However, there is no support for loss aversion. The findings suggest that loss averse behavior may be subdued in the presence of social norms while surprises can result in freedom on the upside of tipping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyze the effects of data pre-processing on the forecasting performance of neural network models. We use three different Artificial Neural Networks techniques to predict tourist demand: multi-layer perceptron, radial basis function and the Elman neural networks. The structure of the networks is based on a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) approach. We use official statistical data of inbound international tourism demand to Catalonia (Spain) and compare the forecasting accuracy of four processing methods for the input vector of the networks: levels, growth rates, seasonally adjusted levels and seasonally adjusted growth rates. When comparing the forecasting accuracy of the different inputs for each visitor market and for different forecasting horizons, we obtain significantly better forecasts with levels than with growth rates. We also find that seasonally adjusted series significantly improve the forecasting performance of the networks, which hints at the significance of deseasonalizing the time series when using neural networks with forecasting purposes. These results reveal that, when using seasonal data, neural networks performance can be significantly improved by working directly with seasonally adjusted levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) to determine differences in UK internet player responses to their motives for gambling online. It also evaluates their views relating to responsible gambling practices and behavioural factors. A three stage analysis applying Structural Equation Modelling (SEM); multiple regression; and multinomial logistic regression is used. The main research instruments is an internet based questionnaire. Our findings for the motivation factors highlight that the most significant factors which players perceive are escape and relaxation; financial motivation; and social and competition. In terms of player views in relation to responsible gambling practices and behavioural factors both self-exclusion and self-help; and game design are identified as the key factors. Other factors such as proactive responsible gambling; transparent terms and conditions; and use of player information are not acknowledged as significant factors by players. This study also suggests that the financial motive to gamble should be divided into the following sub-motives: ‘to win money’ and to ‘earn income’. Our main policy recommendation includes the need for a more transparent system that places emphasis on tangible or auditable means of demonstrating ethical responsibilities, and to determine areas of improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of credit constraints and indivisible consumption goods may induce some risk-averse individuals to gamble to have a chance of crossing a purchasing threshold. This idea has been demonstrated theoretically, but not explored empirically. We test this idea by focusing on a key implication: income effects for individuals who choose to gamble are likely to be larger than for the general population. Using UK data on gambling wins, other windfalls and durable goods purchases, we show that winners display higher income effects than non-winners but only amongst those likely to be credit-constrained. This is consistent with credit-constrained, risk-averse agents gambling to convexify their budget set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kingston (J Comb Theory (A) 20:357-363, 1976) and Anderson (J Comb Theory (A) 23:363, 1977) show that the probability that a given contestant wins a best-of- $$2k+1$$ series of asymmetric, zero-sum, binary-outcome games is, for a large class of assignment rules, independent of which contestant is assigned the advantageous role in each component game. We design a laboratory experiment to test this hypothesis for four simple role-assignment rules. Despite significant differences in the frequency of equilibrium play across the four assignment rules, our results show that the four rules are observationally equivalent at the series level: the fraction of series won by a given contestant and all other series outcomes do not differ across rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines how suspense and surprise affect the demand for entertainment. We use a tennis tournament, the Wimbledon Championships, as a natural laboratory. This setting allows us to both operationalize suspense and surprise by using the audience's beliefs regarding the outcome of the match and observe the demand for live entertainment using TV audience figures. Our match fixed effects estimates of 8563 minute-by-minute observations from 80 men's singles matches between 2009 and 2014 show that both suspense and surprise are drivers of media entertainment demand. In general, surprise seems to be more important in this regard than suspense, and both factors matter more during a match's later moments. We discuss important implications for the design of entertainment content to maximize entertainment demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many public and private entities utilize incentive systems in which improvements in measured performance are rewarded only when the agent crosses some pre-specified threshold. This paper comprehensively analyzes the effects of these incentive systems on effort, the net benefits of effort, and the accuracy of information about agents’ performance, and lays out methods for estimating each. These methods are then used to reveal the motivations, physiological limits, and racing strategy of ultramarathoners trying to complete a one hundred mile race in under twenty-four hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sales are modelled for 50 Spanish provinces over 522 draws of a high prize lotto game. A crossed random effects model allows for random shocks specific to particular draws and to particular provinces. The paper explores how demographic and socio-economic factors influence sales volumes, with particular focus on the relationship between sales and real per capita income at different jackpot sizes. When jackpots are low, sales are shown to rise with the level of provincial incomes. But this relationship disappears or is reversed when rollovers raise the jackpot because sales in poorer provinces are markedly more responsive to jackpot size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes potential gender differences in competitive environments using a sample of over 100,000 professional tennis matches. Focusing on two phenomena of the labor and sports economics literature, we find robust evidence for (i) the hot-hand effect (an additional win in the most recent ten matches raises the likelihood of winning by 3.2–3.4 percentage points) and (ii) the clutch-player effect, as top players are excelling in Grand Slam tournaments, the most important events. Overall, we find virtually no gender differences for the hot-hand effect and only minor distinctions for the clutch-player effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Iranian Government has increased its expenditures on sport activities. The aims of these expenditures are: first, to develop recreational sport facilities to improve public health and to use sport as an instrument of social engineering; and second, to provide elite-level facilities to build a powerful sports nation. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between government expenditures on sport facilities ( GXSF ) and sporting success in the oil-rich economy, Iran. Applying regression analyses to the 31 provinces, our results indicated that a higher level of GXFS was not a significant determinant of sporting success. This result may have been due to the fact that national sport resources are directed toward the inefficient provinces because of a high level of patronage behaviors among political elites and the mismanagement of sport funds. Moreover, our results suggested that provinces with larger populations, hosting more sport events and having more investment in sports by the private sector have higher levels of sporting success. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Philippines aspires to be one of the top tourist destinations in Southeast Asia, self-inflicted wounds like the failure of the government to comply with international aviation safety standards may derail the country from achieving its goals. This article estimates the short- and long-term impact of the US FAA downgrade of the Philippine civil aviation system in 2008 and the EU ban of Philippine carriers in 2010 on tourist expenditures, arrivals, and length of stay using monthly time series data. The econometric model, consisting of three equations due to the endogeneity of the tourist arrivals and length of stay variables in the tourist expenditures equation, is estimated simultaneously using the generalized method of moments. The results indicate that the US FAA downgrade and the EU ban impact monthly tourist receipts negatively in the short term while the downgrade also impacts tourist expenditures in the long term. Moreover, the ban impacts length of stay negatively in the short and long term while the downgrade impacts length of stay negatively only in the long term. The substantial decline in tourism receipts from 2008 to 2010 despite an increasing trend in tourist arrivals is due to the shorter stay of tourists, indicating that high-spending tourists have not returned following the downgrade and ban. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides field evidence on the causal impact of past successes on future performances. Since persistence in success or failure is likely to be linked through, potentially time-varying, ability it is intrinsically difficult to identify the causal effect of succeeding on the probability of performing well in the future. We therefore employ a regression discontinuity design on data from professional golf tournaments exploiting that almost equally skilled players are separated into successes and failures half-way into the tournaments (the “cut”). We show that players who (marginally) succeeded in making the cut substantially increased their performance in subsequent tournaments relative to players who (marginally) failed to make the cut. This success-effect is substantially larger when the subsequent (outcome) tournament involves more prize money. The results therefore suggest that past successes provide an important prerequisite when performing high-stakes tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do large rewards lead to psychological pressure causing underperformance? Previous studies have tested this ‘choking’ phenomenon using the world of sports, but such studies often lack an explicit link between performance and reward. This study utilizes a large PGA TOUR dataset to more directly analyze the effect of pressure on individual performance by calculating the potential change in earnings from making or missing a putt on the final hole of a tournament. We find that as the amount of money riding on a shot increases, the likelihood that shot is made is significantly reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional sports teams receive large subsidies, some in excess of $500 million, from local governments for the construction of new facilities. These subsidies cannot be explained by tangible economic benefits, and estimates of the value of intangible benefits also fall short of typical subsidies. In this paper, we incorporate fans’ reference-dependent preferences into a model of the bargaining between local governments and teams. The model predicts that teams use relocation threats to exploit fans’ utility loss from team departures, a negative deviation from the status quo, to extract large subsidies from local governments. Fans’ loss aversion provides an explanation of the current team distribution, and observed team relocation and league expansion decisions in North America. The model also highlights the importance of anti-trust exemptions of the leagues in creating credible relocation threats for existing teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing the peer assessment category of the US News and World Report's America's Best Colleges rankings, we find that universities fielding a Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) team are more highly rated by administrators and faculty at peer institutions. Universities are also more highly rated if their football team receives a greater number of votes in either the final Associated Press or Coaches’ Poll. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, our estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in votes from one season to the next is associated with a peer score increase that is about equal (in absolute value terms) to the mean year-over-year peer score decline witnessed by the institutions in our sample. Performance matters even if we only focus on FBS schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We revisit a recent study by Lindo, Swensen, and Waddell (2012), who found a negative relationship between the success of the University of Oregon football team and the academic performance of students as measured by grades. Using data from Clemson University, we also find that the football team's winning percentage is negatively related to academic performance. Although Lindo et al. (2012) found that the academic performance of male students was more sensitive to changes in the winning percentage than the academic performance of female students, we find evidence of the opposite phenomenon in the Clemson data. Moreover, the negative relationship between wins and academic performance at Clemson appears to persist into the spring semester. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether stock price performance contains a sizeable component that emanates from local sports sentiment. We measure sports sentiment by the performance of sports teams from the four major professional sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL) that are based nearby firms’ headquarters. We find that concurrent stock returns and sports performances associated with the same locality are highly correlated. Consistent with the notion that mispricing is indeed caused by sports sentiment, we also determine that sentiment is related to a subsequent gradual return reversal, which occurs over the following three year period. In addition, we confirm that local comovement is more pronounced in the presence of sports sentiment in support of the view that local stock preference of relatively less sophisticated retail investors can be driven by factors that are not information-based. Finally, we devise investment strategies based on recent past observations of sports sentiment and find that they generate sizable abnormal returns, especially in cases of firms located in areas where fan base support appears to be stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many households have insufficient savings to handle moderate and routine consumption shocks. Many of these financially fragile households also have the highest lottery expenditures as a proportion of income. This combination suggests that prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, combining security of principal with lottery-type jackpots, can increase savings among these at-risk households. Results from an online experiment show that the introduction of PLS accounts increase total savings and reduce lottery expenditures significantly, especially among individuals with the lowest levels of savings and income. The results imply that PLS accounts offer a plausible market-based solution to encourage individuals to increase savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the impact of domestic and international tourism on the economic growth process for 179 European regions. The econometric analysis is based on a spatial growth regression framework where the rate of GDP per capita growth at the regional level for the period 1999-2009 depends on tourism flows, in addition to the traditional growth variables. Besides controlling for initial conditions, we also include a wide set of covariates to account for the endowment of human and technological capital and for the geographical, social and institutional features of the regions. The results, confirmed by several robustness checks, demonstrate that regional growth is positively affected by domestic and international tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentiment affects the evolving economic valuation of companies through the stock market. It is unclear how ‘news’ affects the sentiment towards major public investments like the Olympics. In this paper we consider, from the context of the pre-event stage of the 30th Olympiad, the relationship between attitudes towards the Olympics and Olympic-related news; specifically the bad news associated with an increase in the cost of provision, and the good news associated with Team Great Britain's medal success in 2008. Using a unique data set and an event-study approach that involves compositional time-series analysis, it is found that ‘good’ news affects sentiments much more than ‘bad’, but that the distribution of such sentiment varies widely. For example, a much more pronounced effect of good news is identified for females than males, but ‘bad’ news has less of an impact on the young and older age groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes to examine the impact of tourism activity on the economic growth of Morocco and Tunisia. We contribute here to the empirical literature on the tourism-led growth hypothesis (TLGH), by adopting the error correction model framework, the cointegration and Granger causality tests between real tourism receipts, real effective exchange rate and economic growth in Morocco and Tunisia, for the annual period 1980–2010; two main results emerge from this analysis. First, contrary to the predictions of the TLGH, the Granger test results show that this hypothesis is only valid for short term in the two countries of Maghreb. Second, the results show that in the long term, there is a strong unidirectional causality from economic growth to international tourism receipts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Culture is gaining increasing importance in the modern tourism industry and represents a significant force of attraction for tourists (both domestic and international). Cultural tourism allows destinations and regions to expand their customer base, diversify their offer, extend the stay of the tourist, and reduce seasonality. Great efforts are made, by national governments and regions, in order to obtain official designation regarding the relevance of their historical/cultural attractions, for example through UNESCO's World Heritage Sites (WHS) list. Such an aspect seems particularly relevant for a country like Italy, which has a high number of entries in the WHS list and where regions take an active role in promoting tourism. Using an 12-year panel of domestic tourism flows, we investigate the importance of the regional endowment in terms of WHS from two perspectives: (a) by separately estimating the effects, on tourism flows, of WHS located in the residence region of tourists and in the destination region; and (b) by taking into account potential spatial substitution/complementarity effects between regions due to their WHS endowment. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is offered to evaluate the spatial extent of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature on border effect has fostered research on informal barriers to trade and the role played by network dependencies. In relation to social networks, it has been shown that intensity of trade in goods is positively correlated with migration flows between pairs of countries/regions. In this article, we investigate whether such a relation also holds for interregional trade of services. We also consider whether interregional trade flows in services linked with tourism exhibit spatial and/or social network dependence. Conventional empirical gravity models assume the magnitude of bilateral flows between regions is independent of flows to/from regions located nearby in space, or flows to/from regions related through social/cultural/ethic network connections. With this aim, we provide estimates from a set of gravity models showing evidence of statistically significant spatial and network (demographic) dependence in the bilateral flows of the trade of services considered. The analysis has been applied to the Spanish intra- and interregional monetary flows of services from the accommodation, restaurants and travel agencies for the period 2000-2009, using alternative datasets for the migration stocks and definitions of network effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses two questions related with tourism as a service trade. Can tourism be explained as other export activities? Does service liberalisation have a positive or negative impact on tourism receipts in destination countries? Previous research has either focused on the demand side factors (i.e. factors of demand in the origin countries) or on tourism as a long-run factor of economic growth. The research shows that a complementary perspective such as that offered by trade in a supply side perspective can render additional insights towards understanding tourism. This approach can explain why countries have absolute and comparative advantage. Another finding is that tourism as an export can be explained by some of the same destination factors that explain other service exports. Using different panel estimators the importance of supply side factors that are to some extent exclusive to tourism are demonstrated: the general price competitiveness of the destination, tourism infrastructure and the provision of safety. The econometric models also confirm the relevance of other conventional explanatory factors of trade in services such as GDP per capita and internet usage. The last part of the article analyses the welfare gains from trade under the general agreement on trade in services (GATS). The revenue (tourism receipt) effect is decomposed into a volume (arrival) and price effect. Results suggest that liberalisers under the GATS gained especially from a volume effect with average higher growth rates in the number of arrivals. There is also found to be a positive effect on the average income earned per tourist from being a liberaliser. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we develop an econometric analysis of the intra- and interregional trade flows of the accommodation, restaurant industry, and travel agency sectors in Spain by means of several specifications of the gravity model and three alternative databases containing the monetary flows for 2001 and 2007. The results obtained show the existence of an important border effect in favour of the intraregional trade of tourism, and verify a minor elasticity of the trade flows in some characteristic tourism sectors in relation to distance. Finally, the two main typologies of flows - tourist establishments and second homes - are modelled separately, identifying specific factors for explaining each category. En este artículo desarrollamos un análisis econométrico de los flujos comerciales intra e interregionales de los sectores hotelero, restauración y agencias de viajes en España, mediante varias especificaciones del modelo de gravedad y tres bases de datos alternativas que incluyen los flujos monetarios en 2001 y 2007. Los resultados obtenidos muestran la existencia de un importante efecto frontera favorable al comercio intrarregional de turismo y corroboran una elasticidad menor de los flujos comerciales en ciertos sectores de turismo característicos en relación a la distancia. Finalmente, se modeliza por separado las dos tipologías principales de flujos - establecimientos turísticos y segundas residencias, mediante la identificación de factores específicos para cada categoría. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The competitiveness of a firm is intimately related to the productivity of its components. The distribution of profits should then be highly correlated with the distribution of productivity—the more equal distribution of productivity the more equal distribution of rents. To assess this argument, the present paper examines the time series behavior of competition within Major League Baseball. The above logic would suggest that the reason for the improvement in the competitive balance in MLB is a more equal distribution of playing talent. In the end, the improvement appears to be driven by increased player homogeneity rather than institutional changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between tourist demand and supply is investigated employing four time series models. To test for Granger causality a bivariate vector autoregression framework is used. Empirical results from each model are derived for the island of Sardinia (Italy) over the time span 1955 to 2004. The first model suggests supply is demand-driven; the second model implies a bi-directional Granger-causal relationship between demand and capacity. The third and fourth models indicate demand is quality-driven. This empirical finding implies that an environmental conservation policy may be feasible without compromising the number of tourists visiting Sardinia and hence its economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While cultural events are primarily hosted to enhance, expand and celebrate a certain culture, the economic role that these events play in the host towns are often overlooked. The economic importance stems from the expenditure by attendants that filters through the local economy, stimulating output in the economy. This note makes use of primary data obtained from visitor (demand side) and business (supply side) surveys to determine the local economic impact of the three leading arts festivals in South Africa. The results indicate that the location and size of the town is an important factor in the impact of the event on the town and the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]