Institutions and Casinos on American Indian Reservations: An Empirical Analysis of the Location of Indian Casinos
实证研究部落政府是否投资赌场的制度决定因素，发现跨州保留地及州法院管辖显著提高赌场运营概率，表明政治压力和可预测司法影响投资激励。
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.