American Indian Casino Operations and Firm Long-Run Employment and Sales

American Indian reservations face long-standing barriers to private-sector development. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which enabled the establishment of casino operations on American Indian tribal lands is one of the most consequential sovereignty-driven, place-based interventions in Native communities. We study its impact on local business revenues and job creation by linking geocoded establishment-level microdata to federally recognized reservation boundaries and a panel of tribal casino openings from 1990 to 2019, using a staggered-adoption event study with never-treated reservation controls. Casino openings lead to economically meaningful and persistent growth in reservation business activity: average establishment sales increase by 47% and employment increases by 50% after opening. Importantly, incumbent establishments also expand, with sales increasing by 17% and employment increasing by 26%, indicating that development benefits extend beyond new entry and beyond the casino itself. When excluding gaming-adjacent industries, employment effects remain positive while sales effects attenuate and are less precisely estimated. Overall, the results provide evidence that tribal casino development leads to sustained private-sector expansion inside reservation boundaries, consistent with local demand, business-to-business spending, and visitor-spending spillovers, and highlight a mechanism through which Indigenous self-determined enterprise can contribute to long-run economic development.