Lottery

A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize. Some governments outlaw it, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments.

At the beginning of the 20th century, most forms of gambling, including lotteries and sweepstakes, were illegal in many countries, including the U.S.A. and most of Europe. This remained so until after World War II. In the 1960s casinos and lotteries began to appear throughout the world as a means to raise revenue in addition to taxes.

Lotteries are most often run by governments or local states and are sometimes described as a regresive tax , since those most likely to buy tickets will typically be the less affluent members of a society. The astronomically high odds against winning the larger prizes have also led to the epithets of a "tax on stupidity" or "math tax". Although the use of the word "tax" is not strictly correct, these descriptions are intended to suggest that lotteries are government-sanctioned operations which will attract only those people who fail to understand that buying a lottery ticket is a poor economic decision. Indeed, after taking into account the present value of a given lottery prize as a single lump sum cash payment, the impact of any taxes that might apply, and the likelihood of having to share the prize with other winners, it is not uncommon to find that a ticket for a typical major lottery is worth less than one third of its purchase price. In other words, if a lottery ticket costs US$1 to purchase, its true economic worth may be only US$0.30 or so at the time of purchase. Of course, this is just a hypothetical example and the actual calculation will be dependent upon the specific details of each lottery. Some lotteries may offer tickets that are worth less than 20% of their price, while others may be worth over 50%. The underlying point is that in order to raise money, lottery operators must ensure that tickets are worth substantially less than what they cost to buy, thereby making the lottery a bad deal for its customers.

Lotteries come in many formats. The prize can be fixed cash or goods. In this format there is risk to the organizer if insufficient tickets are sold. The prize can be a fixed percentage of the receipts. A popular form of this is the "50-50" draw where the organizers promise that the prize will be 50% of the revenue. The prize may be guaranteed to be unique where each ticket sold has a unique number. Many recent lotteries allow purchasers to select the numbers on the lottery ticket resulting in the possibility of multiple winners.

The fact that lotteries are commonly played leads to some contradictions against standard models of economic rationality. However, the expectations of some players may not be to win the game, but to experience the thrill and indulge in a fantasy of possibly becoming wealthy. If the entertainment value (or other non-monetary value) obtained by playing is high enough for a given individual, then the purchase of a lottery ticket could actually represent a gain in overall utility. In such a case, the monetary loss would be outweighed by the non-monetary gain, thus making the purchase a rational decision for that individual.

Lottery tickets are usually scanned in large numbers, using marksence-technology. With today's computer performance, it takes less than one second to check if a particular combination was picked up by anyone, even for lotteries like Euromillions or Mega Millions