Place Based Economic Development and Tribal Casinos

Randall Akee, Maggie R. Jones and Emilia Simeonova

No 33744, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Tribal lands in the U.S. have historically experienced some of the worst economic conditions in the nation. We review some existing research on the effect of American Indian tribal casinos on various measures of local economic development. This is an industry that began in the early 1990s and currently generates more than $40 billion annually. We also review the state of the literature on the effects of casino operations on communities in or adjacent to tribal areas. Using a new dataset linking individual and enterprise-level data longitudinally, this study examines the industry- and location-specific impacts of tribal casino operations. We focus in particular on the employment of American Indians. We document positive flows from unemployment and non-casino geographies to work in sectors related to casino operations. Tribal casinos differ from other standard place-based economic development projects in that they are focused on a single industry; we discuss these differences and note that some of the positive spillover effects may be similar to other, more standard place-based policies. Finally, we discuss additional and open-ended questions for future research on this topic.

JEL-codes: J20 O2 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-lma
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