The demand for gambling in Italian regions and its distributional consequences

In recent years, the Italian gambling market has exploded, leading Italy to become the largest European gambling market and the fourth largest worldwide but the literature on the topic is still limited. This study analyses gambling demand across Italian regions in order to detect how the socio-economic status of a region impacts the demand for different games. The results reveal that the consumption of each game is unevenly distributed across the northern and southern regions and that gambling products are generally regressive at a regional level; inconsistences emerged between central and sub-national competences in the organization of the market.