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Vol. 7 • No. 19 • May 25, 2009, Featured Articles, GOODS & SERVICES

Risk Taking Conference Slated For This Week In Lake Tahoe

Fri, May 22, 2009

One of the industry’s most fascinating conferences, held just once every three years, will debut this week in Lake Tahoe, featuring a wide variety of subjects and speakers.

Risk Taking Conference Slated For This Week In Lake Tahoe
On May 25, the most noteworthy gathering of gambling scholars, researchers and academics ever assembled will take place at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe Resort and Casino at Stateline, Nevada, to analyze, discuss, and debate a wide variety of scientific, policy, business, and aesthetic issues concerning gambling. Altogether, nearly 180 academic and professional papers will be presented over the five days of the conference, divided among 80 sessions. Participants hail from every inhabited continent, and will address many issues that affect, or are affected by, the growing presence of legal commercial gaming in jurisdictions throughout the world.

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the first National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, which was held in Las Vegas in June 1974. Over that span, casino gaming has grown from a pariah industry outlawed throughout the United States except Nevada, and almost everywhere else in the world, to one that has become ubiquitous. As of 2009, legal commercial gaming generates revenues of about a quarter of a trillion dollars globally, and only a handful of nations and states still prohibit the activity.

Among the topics that will be dealt with at this conference will be:

• Political and Economic Dimensions of Gaming Industries
• Gambling And The Law
• Estimating Demand for Gaming Markets
• Managing a Casino License Bid Process
• Casino Marketing and Loyalty Programs
• Empirical Casino Operations Management Research
• Smoking Bans and Casinos
• The Life of the Internet Gambler
• The Image of Gambling Towns
• Analyzing Poker and Blackjack
• Optimizing Returns in Parimutuel and Sports Wagering
• Cultural Perspectives on Gambling and Gamblers
• Responsible Gambling Policies and Harm Minimization
• Gambling With the Global Economy: Seeing the Financial Sector as a Casino
• Links between gambling and the current economic crisis
• Prediction Markets
• The National Gambling Impact Study Commission's Final Report Ten Years Later
• The National Indian Regulatory Act 20 Years Later
• The Future of the Modern Casino Corporation
• Applications of Technology in Addressing Problem Gambling
• Historic Perspectives on Gaming Industries

Keynote speakers and their topics are:

• Eugene Christiansen, Christiansen Capital Advisors, New York: “The Problem Isn’t Gambling—The Problem is Debt”
• Aaron Brown, AQR Capital Management, Connecticut: “The Year of Betting Dangerously”
• Professor Robert Ladouceur, Laval University (Quebec): “Controlled Gambling instead of Abstinence for Problem Gamblers”
• Professor Don Ross, University of Cape Town: “The Neuro-Economics of Gambling”
• Don Feeney, Minnesota Lottery: “Gambling in American Traditional and Popular Music”
• William R. Eadington, University of Nevada, Reno: “Parallels Between the Global Economic Crisis, Gamblers, and Gaming Industries”

Other distinguished researchers who will be participating include: Professor I. Nelson Rose, Whittier Law School; Professor Peter Collins, National Responsible Gambling Programme, South Africa; Professor Bo Bernhard, University of Nevada Las Vegas; Anthony Jennens, GamCare, United Kingdom; Professor Alex Blaszczynski, University of Sydney; Professor Stewart Ethier, University of Utah; Professor Alicia Barber, University of Nevada, Reno; Ricardo Siu, University of Macau; and many more.

Jurisdictions to be discussed at the conference cover the world, from Nevada to China to South Africa to Australia to Slovenia to Kansas. Gaming industries which will be analyzed include casinos, lotteries, racing, sports wagering, internet gambling, slot machine manufacturing, and Wall Street.

For further information on the Conference, call 775-784-1442, or visit www.unr.edu/gaming.

By Staff

Staff

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