CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Spies, Benjamin Joseph |
|---|---|
| Title | Tumbling Dice: Assessing Commercial Casinos as a Strategy for Urban Economic Development |
| Summary | Casino gambling has rapidly expanded throughout the United States in recent decades as subnational governments elect to lift longstanding prohibitions on it. Casinos are seen by some to provide opportunities for economic development in areas hit hard by the loss of other industries and troubled public budgets. The decision of whether or not to legalize casino gambling significantly affects municipalities; however, little research has been done on their impacts at the city level. This thesis explores the effectiveness of commercial casinos as an urban economic development strategy, examining their impact in two case study cities over time on a series of economic indicators against control cities, and seeking evidence for industry cannibalization and job leakage theorized in literature. It uses a robust community matching process to establish controls with a difference-in-differences method to measure results. It finds that, while urban casinos have little effect on overall municipal economic health and do not appear to cannibalize jobs from other industries, they do bleed many jobs away to other communities by hiring mostly non-residents. To attain the economic development benefits city-level policy makers seek in their negotiations with casino operators, they must enact stringent local-hiring requirements before approving casino proposals. |
| Supervisor | Jokay, Karoly |
| Department | School of Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/spies_benjamin.pdf |
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