The final poll for 2016 is on the subject of gambling.  We asked our panellists to comment on the following proposition: "The social costs of gambling exceed the benefits (including consumer surplus from recreational gambling and tax revenue for governments)"

Complete poll results, charts and panellist comments are on the ESA-Monash Forum website.

As the 'pilot' year of this initiative concludes, we would like to take this opportunity to wholeheartedly thank all the NEP panellists for voting and for their wonderfully insightful responses to each poll. Although not our primary objective, the media coverage and citations of poll results by politicians this year have demonstrated the potential of the NEP policy polling platform to rapidly inject timely, concentrated and digestible doses of expert economic thinking into the public debate - crowd-sourced not just from a handful of commentators but from dozens of eminent Australian expert economists in a transparent way (see for example, our Australian and US election polls). We have also tried to use the platform to showcase economics to a broader audience, to demonstrate the breadth of our discipline and its ability to be applied to (almost) all aspects of life (see for example, our poll this time last year on the economics of Christmas). We hope that - with new technology and collaboration - we are helping to achieve the original objectives of the Society from 1925!  

We would like to also thank the staff of Monash Business School for their assistance this year. The website has just been given a nice refresh - check it out. 

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