Document Type
Article
Abstract
Legislators and community members alike have discussed the pros and cons of opening casinos. A frequently mentioned benefit of opening casinos is that they will bring jobs and thus reduce unemployment. Past studies have looked at the effect casinos have on unemployment over a period of a few years; this is the first study to look at data from over two decades (1990-2012). This study uses an ordinary least squares regression to look at the effect that 56 commercial casinos in the Midwestern United States have had on county unemployment. A significant correlation is found between the presence of a casino in a county and a lower unemployment rate. Other variables that have a statistically significant effect on the county unemployment rate are the state unemployment rate, the percentage of the population that is white, and real county per capita income.
Publication Date
Spring 2014
Journal Title
Major Themes in Economics
Volume
16
Issue
1
First Page
1
Last Page
14
Copyright
©2014 by Major Themes in Economics
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Irlmeier, Amber
(2014)
"Royal Flush or Just a Bluff: Casinos and County Unemployment in the Midwestern United States,"
Major Themes in Economics, 16, 1-14.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/mtie/vol16/iss1/3