The Lottery

The concept of the lottery has been fascinating my economic mind recently. All systems in which predictions are semi accurate are very inefficient. The lottery gets rid of accurate predictions. I wish I knew how to formulate that into proper economic theory.

But anyway, one reason I've thought about it was my rereading of the short story by Jorge Luis Borges, 'The Lottery in Babylon' over the summer. The second was talking to a band last night who named an EP after the Shirley Jackson story 'The Lottery'. I haven't been able to find any other short stories explicitly about lotteries and their effects on people. The two are really excellent stories, though. I wanted to share them.

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

The Lottery in Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges