College

College of Business Administration

Date of Last Revision

2023-05-08 17:29:32

Major

Business Data Analytics

Honors Course

ECON 497 - 001 Honors Project in Economics

Number of Credits

3

Degree Name

Bachelor of Business Administration

Date of Expected Graduation

Spring 2023

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in 2018 to allow states and Washington D.C. to implement state-sponsored sports gambling on that state’s real GDP per capita. In addition, this paper also analyzes if there is a statistically significant difference in the measures of the real GDP per capita between the various levels of legalization states have incorporated including retail-only, online-only, and fully legalized. The motivation for this research stems from the recent increase in the number of states that have legalized sports gambling to some degree as well as the growing popularity of the sports betting industry.

Relevant data over the past decade was organized and analyzed through a Two-Way Fixed Effects Difference-In-Differences Method due to the presence of fixed effects and the ability to compare groups that were administered treatment at different points in time. This paper provides an argument for a causal relationship between real GDP per capita and legalization status. The results of this study indicate that legalizing sports gambling online or fully (online and retail) increases the real GDP per capita of a state, on average, by $1,073.28 and $2,845.88 respectively. These findings are within the threshold of the 99% confidence level and indicate as well that the respective levels of legalization statuses are significantly different from one another. In addition, having retail sports betting has no significant impact on a state’s real GDP per capita. The significant positive effect that online and fully legalized sports betting has on the real GDP per capita may incentivize politicians to adopt sports betting if their state has not done so already. Purely economically, the idea of introducing sports betting is beneficial, although further research should be done to test other economic factors or relevant non-economic factors before implementing any policies.

Research Sponsor

Dr. Ali Enami

First Reader

Dr. Ali Enami

Second Reader

Dr. Michael DeDad

Honors Faculty Advisor

Dr. Sucharita Ghosh

Proprietary and/or Confidential Information

No

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.