International Confidence in Italian Economy. A Spread and Gambling Analysis

Abstract Gambling is an ancient human activity with a prevalent position nowadays both as a social entertainment activity and as a way to gain money effortless. Every country has its specific pattern in gambling determined both by its cultural and macroeconomic determinants and by its national regulatory framework. Macroeconomic variables as gross national income per capita, annual variation of GDP or unemployment were previously proved to be connected with the gambling industry. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects generated by the internal and external loss of confidence in the Italian economy, as an effect of the latest financial crisis, over the Italian gambling industry. The level of spread between the 10 years yield of Italian and German government bonds is used as a proxy for the international trust in the Italian economy and the Economic Sentiment Indicator is used to describe the Italian citizens' confidence. The main results show a strong positive, statistically significant correlation between skill games and spread and an unexpected negative significant correlations between spread and lottery, one of the purely fortune games that was often seen as an ultimate chance to survive the crisis. The Economic Sentiment Indicator seems not to be correlated with any of the gambling categories.