Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits

Gambling in America carefully breaks new ground by developing analytical tools to assess the benefits and costs of the economic and social changes introduced by casino gambling in monetary terms, linking them to individual households’ utility and well-being. Since casinos are associated with unintended and often negative economic consequences, these factors are incorporated into the discussion. The book also shows how amenity benefits - for casinos, the benefit to consumers of closer proximity - enter the evaluation. Other topics include agent incentives and public decision making, conceptual clarifications about economic development, cost-benefit analysis, and net export multiplier models. Professor Grinols finds that, in considering all relevant factors, the social costs of casino gambling outweigh their social benefits.

• The most far-reaching analysis of the social costs and social benefits of American gambling to date • Author balances positive features such as economics growth, employment, empowerment against costs of suicide, theft, embezzlement, alcoholism, etc. caused by gambling • Tone is even-handed throughout, no math, arguments done in narrative

1. Introduction; 2. Considerations; 3. Agents and incentives; 4. Economic development; 5. Cost-benefit analysis; 6. Social benefits; 7. Social costs; 8. The present and the future.