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Parliament decision on gambling regulation

The Swedish parliament decided on March 25 that a licensing system shall be implemented on the gambling market. The parliament requests that the government during this year gives directives for an investigation on how such a system should be designed. Actually, this is no news. For several years there has been a political majority for …

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Why I started to study gambling: A treasure tale

Gambling is not a common topic of academic research and people sometimes ask me why I choose to specialize in gambling studies. Here is the story of how it started. Back in 1997 I had completed my doctoral thesis, in which I explore and analyze notions of life-force and transcendence in traditional Southern Italy. One …

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Gambling advertising bibliography update

The report Gambling advertising: A critical research review was written by Per Binde for the Responsible Gambling Trust in the UK. It was published in April, 2014. The report has an appendix with a bibliography of empirical studies examining gambling advertising. I regularly prepare a Bibliography update, which lists works that have been published after …

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Forum for problem gambling issues

A very interesting conference took place in Malmö on November 28-29: Forum for Problem Gambling Issues (”Forum för spelberoendefrågor”). The conference was financed by the Public Health Agency of Sweden and organized by the National Association of Problem Gamblers (Spelberoendes riksförbund, SBRF). About sixty people participated in the conference. The majority were from mutual support …

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Fourth GARN network meeting

The Swedish network of gambling researchers – GARN – held its fourth meeting on November 19 – 20, 2014, in Stockholm. The agenda included many topics but to me the most interesting discussion was about the concept of addiction. The discussion was held in connection to two presentations about online gaming. The presenters – Rune Aune Mentzoni (invited …

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