@techreport{NBERw14742, title = "Is Lottery Gambling
Addictive?", author = "Jonathan Guryan and Melissa Schettini
Kearney", institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
type = "Working Paper", series = "Working Paper Series", number
= "14742", year = "2009", month = "February", doi =
{10.3386/w14742}, URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w14742",
abstract = {We present an empirical test for the addictiveness
of lottery gambling. To distinguish state dependence from serial
correlation, we exploit an exogenous shock to local market
consumption of lottery gambling. We use the sale of a winning
ticket in the zip code, the location of which is random
conditional on sales, as an instrument for present consumption
and test for a causal relationship between present and future
consumption. This test of addiction is based on the definition
of addiction commonly used in the economics literature. It has
two key advantages over previous tests for addiction. First, our
test is unique in being based on an observed inc