IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/buc/jgbeco/v2y2008i2p17-41.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Casinos on Local Labor Markets: A County Level Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Chad Cotti

    (Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh)

Abstract

The economic outcomes surrounding the dramatic spread of “Las Vegas” style casinos in the United States has become a point of great interest and inquiry both politically and academically. Prior research has tended to focus on regional studies and provided uniform conclusions regardless of differences in the nature of the community. Moreover, much of the previous empirical work fails to account for local level trends during estimation. By using a comprehensive data set on employment and earnings from across the US, and by including county-specific trends, this research hopes to alleviate these earlier concerns, as well as help reconcile differences in the early literature surrounding casino effects on related industrial sectors. Basic findings suggest that counties experience an increase in employment after a casino opens, but there seems to be no measurable effect on average earnings. More detailed analysis reveals that the effect on industries related to casinos is somewhat mixed, but in general mildly positive, as casinos provide a positive employment and earnings spillovers into the surrounding local community. Intertemporal estimation suggests that the casino effect changes over time, but also finds that time effects vary across sectors. Estimates of how overall effects vary across different population sizes find that employment growth is inversely related to county population. Finally, additional estimation finds little impact on employment levels in neighboring counties, although there are some small effects in certain industries.

Suggested Citation

  • Chad Cotti, 2008. "The Effect of Casinos on Local Labor Markets: A County Level Analysis," Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 2(2), pages 17-41, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:buc:jgbeco:v:2:y:2008:i:2:p:17-41
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ubplj.org/index.php/jgbe/article/view/529
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Scavette, Adam, 2023. "The economic impact of a casino monopoly: Evidence from Atlantic City," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    2. Douglas M. Walker & Todd M. Nesbit, 2014. "Casino Revenue Sensitivity to Competing Casinos: A Spatial Analysis of Missouri," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 21-40, March.
    3. Melisa Bubonya & David P. Byrne, 2020. "Supplying Slot Machines to the Poor," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(3), pages 1081-1109, January.
    4. Karl R. Geisler & Mark W. Nichols, 2016. "Riverboat casino gambling impacts on employment and income in host and surrounding counties," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 56(1), pages 101-123, January.
    5. Humphreys, Brad R. & Marchand, Joseph, 2013. "New casinos and local labor markets: Evidence from Canada," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 151-160.
    6. Chakraborty Avinandan & Doremus Jacqueline & Stith Sarah, 2021. "The effects of recreational cannabis access on labor markets: evidence from Colorado," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 10(1), pages 1-86, January.
    7. Joseph Marchand & Jeremy Weber, 2018. "Local Labor Markets And Natural Resources: A Synthesis Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 469-490, April.
    8. Michael Wenz, 2014. "Valuing Casinos as a Local Amenity," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 136-158, March.
    9. Siew Hoon Lim & Lei Zhang, 2017. "Does Casino Development Have a Positive Effect on Economic Growth?," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 409-434, September.
    10. Giotis Georgios, 2022. "Preliminary Results on the Employment Effect of Tourism. A meta-analysis," Papers 2206.00174, arXiv.org.
    11. Douglas M. Walker, 2010. "Casinos and Crime in the USA," Chapters, in: Bruce L. Benson & Paul R. Zimmerman (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Crime, chapter 19, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:buc:jgbeco:v:2:y:2008:i:2:p:17-41. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dominic Cortis, University of Malta (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ubpl.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.