BICEPS/SSE Riga Research Seminar: Stock markets as casinos. The drivers and effects of gambling on stock markets

The event has been cancelled

Using global data on gambling in “traditional” venues such as casinos, and novel estimates of gambling in stock markets, we find that: (i) there is at least 3.5 times as much gambling in stock markets as there is in all “traditional” forms of gambling including casinos and lotteries; (ii) the amount of stock market gambling and casino gambling are positively related across countries due to common drivers including wealth, culture, and economic conditions; and (iii) restrictions on gambling in casinos lead to spillovers of gambling into stock markets. Exploiting casino regulation as an instrument, we find that increased gambling in stock markets increases liquidity and consequently improves the amount of information in prices, consistent with theory.

Tālis Putniņš is affiliated with the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, the Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies, and the University of Technology Sydney. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University and New York University. His main research interests include financial markets, market microstructure, market manipulation, insider trading, asset pricing, and shadow economies.  His research has been published in leading international peer-reviewed journals including the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Review of Finance, and Experimental Economics.  Tālis is an Associate Editor of the Baltic Journal of Economics.  Tālis has done consulting and policy work for governments, stock exchanges, and financial institutions and served as an expert witness in legal cases in Europe, Asia, and Australia.  Talis has a PhD in financial economics from the University of Sydney.