New Price, New Hope? An Examination of the Effects of Doubling the Ticket Price in UK Lotto.

The UK Lotto game was introduced in November 1994 with a standard 6/49 format and an entry fee of £1 per ticket. After several years, revenue began to fall despite extensive publicity and a variety of inducements. By 2013, nominal weekly revenue was less than half the 1995 level. In October 2013, the operator doubled the price of a ticket to £2 and made a number of changes to the pay-out structure of smaller prizes. The intent of the changes was to reverse the long downward trend in game revenue by encouraging higher jackpots and offering more pay-out opportunities for each ticket. We use draw by draw revenue and other data to evaluate how players responded to these changes and find that, while ticket sales fell dramatically, total revenue rose following the changes. Primarily this appears to have been the consequence of increased frequency of rollovers (and therefore of more frequent high jackpot draws) rather than ticket price inelasticity. However, although there was a short-term gain in revenue, the changes did not arrest, and indeed seem to have accentuated, the long-run trend decrease in the revenue generated by the game.

Market structure elements: the case of California nursing homes.

This article empirically examines how various elements of market structure affect the pricing behavior and profitability of individual nursing homes in California. Market structure elements include seller concentration, the concentration of nursing homes organized on a nonprofit basis, and concentration of nursing homes organized on an independent basis in the market area. It is hypothesized that the latter two variables affect the nature of competition in the market area. Using data for year 2000, the empirical results suggest that both the private payer price and Lerner index are higher in nursing home market areas with increased seller concentration and concentration of secular, not-for-profit nursing homes. Neither price nor profitability is influenced by the market concentration of independent nursing homes, however. All in all, the study suggests that the typical California nursing home possesses some degree of market power, even in the absence of a state certificate of need law.