Digital Commons Network^™

The Economic Ferocity Of Policy, Giana Depaul

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

Each day, as the Dow Jones rises and falls, Congress similarly passes and fails legislation. These two seemingly continuous cycles intersect to the point that the two structures appear affixed. For centuries, this has posed an age-old question: is it policy that influences the economic system or is it the economic system itself that molds policy decision-making? Renowned economist Adam Smith is famous for his works detailing the autonomous nature of the economic system. Smith views policy as only a small roadblock in the master strategy of the economic flow of life. The Great Depression and the 2008 Recession, however, …

Antitrust In The Age Of Trump, Stephen Langeland

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

Calls for regulation of major tech giants are currently ringing out from both the left and right sides of the political spectrum, largely for different reasons (Soave 2020). The current DOJ antitrust suit against Google was undermined by murmurs of political motivation as former-Attorney General William Barr personally played a key role in pushing the investigation forward into a lawsuit. (Birnbaum 2020). Prior examples of this can be seen in the reportedly political motivation of the DOJ’s unsuccessful attempt to block the 2017 merger of President Trump’s nemesis CNN’s parent company Time Warner and AT&T following President Trump’s campaign trail …

Public Interests And Economic Regulation Of Gambling, Rein Halbersma, Joost Poort

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

In the Netherlands, the Betting and Gaming Act from 1964 largely determines the current structure of gambling markets. The policy was to channel consumers to a limited number of licensed operators. This led to state-owned monopolies for lotteries, sports betting and casinos, a private monopoly for horse race betting, a limited number of privately owned charity lotteries, and a large number of private slot machines operators.

Pending legislation proposes an online market without a limit on the number of operators. Furthermore, state ownership will be phased out, and introduced legislation to privatizing and expanding the number of casinos. The current …

What Is A Game Of Chance? An Application To Loot Boxes, Wessel Oomens

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

The traditional landscape of games of chance such as lotteries, betting, casinos and slots has become intertwined with complex financial products as well as digital games with elements of chance.

The Netherlands Gambling Authority has issued a guidance paper outlining a five-step decision process in order to determine whether a game classifies as gambling:

• Threshold: is the number of providers, players and the amount money involved considerable enough to warrant spending resources in assessing the game?
• Overlap: is there potential overlap with other rules and regulations, in particular those governing financial products?
• Prize: does the game award its winners with …

Gamblerization Of Post-Communist Society In Central Europe, Zdeněk Szczyrba, David Fiedor, Irena Smolová

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Countries of Central European region (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary) joined a new stage of their development after 1989. In these countries, there was a building process of capitalism which went in parallel with far-reaching structural economic and social changes; such as the privatization of economies, de-industrialization but also gamblerization of society. Clarifying this term, gamblerization, it could be described as the process of a continuous penetration of gaming facilities in the area accompanied by an increased availability and accessibility of gaming machines in the society. It is important to say that this process was particularly allowed owing to …