EMERGING GAMBLING MARKET OF GEORGIA (ECONOMIC DIMENSION)

Abstract

There are many different views on gambling in the history of mankind, which leads to constant debate about the advantages and disadvantages of gambling. In particular, one group of people sees it as a way to have fun and rejuvenate; the second group considers it as a category of moral decline of human beings; the third group views it as social evil and crime-prone behavior; another group deems gambling as a business activity and supports its legalization. Gambling has negative as well as some positive impact on the economy of the country and the society general. The paper considers the challenging issues of the gambling policy of Georgia in recent years from prag­matic as well as conceptual point of view, where the social losses and economic benefits of gambling are presented. In a purely economic sense, gambling is as much a business as any other business in the business sector, but it differs radically from all other areas of business in the following specifics for the state and the society living in this field: 1. a «set» of extremely high social risks is created, the partial neutralization of which is possible only in case of its best organization; 2. In any country, the gambling business is associated with the ugly and difficult-to-control practice of money laun­dering, which states are struggling with through various monitoring levers and mechanisms. The work deals with analysis and discussion of the role of gambling business and its importance in economy, objective and subjective factors of increase and development of the gambling segment, effects of its positive and negative influence on stakeholders, fiscal determinants, financial-eco­nomic and social-economic problems of the sector, proper recommendations have been developed on the basis of the theoretical and empirical analysis and conclusions.

Keywords

• gambling
• gaming industry
• gambling market
• economic benefits
• social losses