TY  - BOOK
AU  - Cookson,J.Anthony
TI  - Institutions and Casinos on American Indian Reservations: an Empirical Analysis of the Location of Indian Casinos
SN  - 00222186
AV  - HB73 JOU 
PY  - 2010///
CY  - Chicago
PB  - University of Chicago Press
KW  - Casinos
KW  - Economic investment
KW  - Gambling
KW  - Jurisdiction
KW  - Native Americans
KW  - Public investments
KW  - State courts
KW  - State government
KW  - Treaty lands
N2  - This paper empirically investigates the institutional determinants of whether a tribal government invests in a casino. I find that the presence of Indian casinos is strongly related to plausibly exogenous variation in reservations’ legal and political institutions. Tribal governments that can negotiate gaming compacts with multiple state governments, because tribal lands span state borders, had more than twice the estimated probability (.77 versus .32) of operating an Indian casino in 1999. Tribal governments of reservations where contracts are adjudicated in state courts, rather than tribal courts, have more than twice the estimated probability (.76 versus .34) of investing in an Indian casino, ceteris paribus. These findings suggest that states’ political pressures and predictable judiciaries affect incentives to invest in casinos. This study contributes, more generally, to the empirical literature on the effects of institutions by providing new evidence that low-cost contracting is important for taking advantage of substantial investment opportunities
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1086/649030
ER  -