In a story about privatizing the lottery in Pennsylvania on WHYY’s Radio Times, Victor Matheson, associate professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross, commented on the pros and cons of Governor Corbett’s controversial decision to contract with the Camelot Group, a U.K.-based private lottery company.
Noting that in the first year of privatization Illinois saw record lottery revenue, Matheson said, “Just because you privatize something doesn’t necessarily mean that’s some sort of silver bullet that solves all of your problems. You have lots of state lotteries run very efficiently and generating significant revenues being run by the government. Just because it’s being run by the government doesn’t mean it’s being run inefficiently. And it doesn’t mean that a private company can automatically, just by the magic of the marketplace, come in and generate significantly higher revenues.”
This "Holy Cross in the News" item by Kristine Maloney.
