During the highly contentious and frequently bad-tempered discussions over the merits of casinos as a regenerative measure for local economies, a paper has been written on ‘Matching Estimation, Casino Gambling and the Quality of Life.’ Michael Wenz, assistant professor in Economics and Finance at Winona State University, has been awarded a prize in Regional Science, the official journal of the Regional Science Association International.

Wenz, who earned his doctorate at the University of Illinois-Chicago, has written the paper to assess the bottom line impact of casino gambling on the welfare of local residents. The study is based on information and data from the United States but is probably generally relevant for large scale casinos in any developed country. With both sides of any argument over casinos being able to produce research and statistics to support their cause, the findings of this latest piece of scientific work are hardly surprising.

With great care and propensity score matching, Michael Wenz concludes that casinos neither raise nor lower the quality of life in their host county and do not significantly impact house prices, wages or rents. Tribal casinos were found to generate some additional economic activity. The paper does not look at the effect of casinos on the few individuals who develop gambling problems, but looks at the wider picture and examines casino impact on local communities. (E-02.08.07)

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