Third-party responsible gambling accreditation programs are related to short-term improvements at casinos but no ongoing gains: Evidence from RG Check

This study examines how casino operators’ responsible gambling program performance changes after entering a third-party assurance program. Using de-identified responsible gambling accreditation data from the 75 casinos employing the “RG Check” program from 2012 to April 2019, this study finds that casino scores improved in the first reaccreditation period (p \u3c .001, d = 0.92), but failed to improve in the second reaccreditation (p \u3c .78, d = 0.38). Much of the first reaccreditation changes appear to be a result of one-time improvement in the scores of lower performing venues. There also appears to be inconsistent improvements in tactical areas of RG programs, as some areas improved over time while others were unchanged or declined. The Friedman test revealed statistically significant increases in scores for RG policies (p \u3c .001); employee training (p \u3c .001); venue/game features (p \u3c .001); and access to money (p \u3c .001). It also revealed a decrease in informed decision making scores (p = .010). The evidence is consistent with accreditation programs being used as a reputation signal rather than a performance management tool. The findings from this study suggest that RG assurance programs lead to some benefit but may not be a source of ongoing and consistent improvement without programmatic changes or other regulatory tools

Upwelling in the Gulf of Guinea

Upwelling along the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea occurs only between June and October even though the local winds are favorable for upwelling throughout the year and have no seasonal variability. Away from the coast, near the equator for example, the winds do vary seasonally and cause large scale oceanographic conditions in the Gulf of Guinea to change seasonally...

A normative analysis of gambling tax policy

This article surveys the application of normative tax theory to gambling tax policy. The analysis suggests that fixed license based taxes may be preferable to taxes on gross gaming revenue. Where output based taxes are used, the types of gambling whose demand is more price sensitive, and the types that have positive links to other industries, should be taxed at comparatively lower rates. Sin-based taxes are noted to increase economic welfare, but only when applied with a rate commensurate to harm that is external to the gambler and the operator. Finally, inter-jurisdictional competition is identified as an important consideration in tax policy and enforcement

The effects of coastal geometry on equatorial waves (forced waves in the Gulf of Guinea)

The response of a stratified, semi-infinite equatorial ocean, bounded by a zonal coast close to the equator, to forcing at a given frequency and zonal wavenumber, is considered. If the coast is distant from the equator, the vertically propagating waves that are excited could include an infinite set of inertia-gravity waves, a finite set of Rossby waves, a Rossby-gravity wave and a coastally or equatorially trapped Kelvin wave...

The Effect of Online Gaming on Commercial Casino Revenue

This study estimates the effect of the online gaming industry on the commercial casino gaming industry. The findings from this study suggest that during the pre-UIGEA period, online gaming was a moderate substitute good for brick and mortar gaming in the U.S. During this early period in the online gaming market, which was characterized by loose regulation and relatively easy access, online gaming revenue is estimated to have cannibalized commercial casino revenue at a rate of 27 to 30 cents on the dollar. A discussion of this finding’s relevance to the current gaming market and the related policy considerations is provided. This study also led to the discovery of a seemingly valid instrumental variable, internet user rates, which can be used to correct internet gaming coefficient estimates for potential bias in future studies

El Niño and the delayed action oscillator

We study the dynamics of the El Niño phenomenon using the mathematical model of delayedaction oscillator (DAO). Topics such as the influence of the annual cycle, global warming, stochastic influences due to weather conditions and even off-equatorial heat-sinks can all be discussed using only modest analytical and numerical resources. Thus the DAO allows for a pedagogical introduction to the science of El Niño and La Niña while at the same time avoiding the need for large-scale computing resources normally associated with much more sophisticated coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models. It is an approach which is ideally suited for student projects both at high school and undergraduate level

The Energetics of El Niño and La Niña

Data from a realistic model of the ocean, forced with observed atmospheric conditions for the period 1953–92, are analyzed to determine the energetics of interannual variability in the tropical Pacific. The work done by the winds on the ocean, rather than generating kinetic energy, does work against pressure gradients and generates buoyancy power, which in turn is responsible for the rate of change of available potential energy (APE). This means interannual fluctuations in work done by the wind have a phase that leads variations in APE. Variations in the sea surface temperature (SST) of the eastern equatorial Pacific and in APE are highly correlated and in phase so that changes in the work done by the wind are precursors of El Niño. The wind does positive work on the ocean during the half cycle that starts with the peak of El Niño and continues into La Niña; it does negative work during the remaining half cycle. The results corroborate the delayed oscillator mechanism that qualitatively describes the deterministic behavior of ENSO. In that paradigm, a thermocline perturbation appearing in the western equatorial Pacific affects the transition from one phase of ENSO to the next when that perturbation arrives in the eastern equatorial Pacific where it influences SST. The analysis of energetics indicates that the transition starts earlier, during La Niña, when the perturbation is still in the far western equatorial Pacific. Although the perturbation at that stage affects the thermal structure mainly in the thermocline, at depth, the associated currents are manifest at the surface and immediately affect work done by the wind. For the simulation presented here, the change in energy resulting from adjustment processes far outweighs that due to stochastic processes, such as intraseasonal wind bursts, at least during periods of successive El Niño and La Niña events

Atmospheric Response to the North Pacific Enabled by Daily Sea Surface Temperature Variability

Ocean–atmosphere interactions play a key role in climate variability on a wide range of time scales from seasonal to decadal and longer. The extratropical oceans are thought to exert noticeable feedbacks on the atmosphere especially on decadal and longer time scales, yet the large-scale atmospheric response to anomalous extratropical sea surface temperature (SST) is still under debate. Here we show, by means of dedicated high-resolution atmospheric model experiments, that sufficient daily variability in the extratropical background SST needs to be resolved to force a statistically significant large-scale atmospheric response to decadal North Pacific SST anomalies associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which is consistent with observations. The large-scale response is mediated by atmospheric eddies. This implies that daily extratropical SST fluctuations must be simulated by the ocean components and resolved by the atmospheric components of global climate models to enable realistic simulation of decadal North Pacific sector climate variability