{"title":"The economic impact of a casino monopoly: Evidence from Atlantic City","authors":"Adam Scavette","doi":"10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2023.103952","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Place-based policies and investments are often targeted at areas in economic decline and sometimes take the form of a granted monopoly (e.g., state flagship universities, professional sports franchises, mega events). After New Jersey voters approved legalized gambling as an economic development strategy to revive the blighted seaside resort town, Atlantic City held a regional monopoly on casinos east of the Mississippi River from 1978 through 1992. Using synthetic difference-in-differences, I find that commercial casinos had an immediate impact on the Atlantic City Metropolitan Area (Atlantic County) in the first five years through an increase in employment (26 percent), wages (9 percent), personal income (5 percent), and house prices (19 percent). The casinos’ positive impact on the metropolitan labor market was persistent and increasing through the early 1990s, but I find evidence that the city’s 1992 monopoly expiration negatively impacted the growth of local wages and personal income through 2000.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48196,"journal":{"name":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016604622300087X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Place-based policies and investments are often targeted at areas in economic decline and sometimes take the form of a granted monopoly (e.g., state flagship universities, professional sports franchises, mega events). After New Jersey voters approved legalized gambling as an economic development strategy to revive the blighted seaside resort town, Atlantic City held a regional monopoly on casinos east of the Mississippi River from 1978 through 1992. Using synthetic difference-in-differences, I find that commercial casinos had an immediate impact on the Atlantic City Metropolitan Area (Atlantic County) in the first five years through an increase in employment (26 percent), wages (9 percent), personal income (5 percent), and house prices (19 percent). The casinos’ positive impact on the metropolitan labor market was persistent and increasing through the early 1990s, but I find evidence that the city’s 1992 monopoly expiration negatively impacted the growth of local wages and personal income through 2000.
期刊介绍:
Regional Science and Urban Economics facilitates and encourages high-quality scholarship on important issues in regional and urban economics. It publishes significant contributions that are theoretical or empirical, positive or normative. It solicits original papers with a spatial dimension that can be of interest to economists. Empirical papers studying causal mechanisms are expected to propose a convincing identification strategy.