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Native American Advisory Services
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Douglas M. Walker, Ph.D.
Dr. Walker is an Academic Affiliate with Meister Economic Consulting and a Professor of Economics at the College of Charleston. He is a leading expert on gambling economics. In addition to teaching and conducting research, he has served as a consultant on gaming-related issues for a variety of government, industry, and research organizations, including the Canadian Gaming Association, the American Gaming Association, the Alberta Gaming Research Institute, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, the National Center for Responsible Gaming, the Casino
Association of Indiana, the Nevada Resort Association, the States of Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Missouri, the Dutch State Lottery, and the French Embassy Department of Economic Affairs.
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Dr. Walker has been a key contributor to research on the social impacts and costs of gambling, particularly methodological issues related to the identification and measurement of social costs. He has also conducted extensive research on the economic impacts of casinos, including the impacts on economic growth, state government revenues, retail property values, and economic recovery from natural disasters.
Dr. Walker has written extensively on the economics of casino gambling. He has published two books, The Economics of Casino Gambling and Casinonomics: The Socioeconomic Impacts of Gambling. He has published more than 50 book chapters and written peer-reviewed academic articles in journals such as American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Contemporary Economic Policy, International Gambling Studies, Journal of Gambling Studies, Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Public Choice, Public Finance Review, and Review of Regional Studies.
Dr. Walker has presented his gaming research at numerous academic and industry conferences, including the Canadian Gaming Summit and the International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking, as well as conferences hosted by the Alberta Gaming Research Institute, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, the National Center for Responsible Gaming, the European Association for the Study of Gambling, and the Responsible Gambling Council. He has also presented his research at the University of Alberta, the Center for the Study of Political Economy at Hampden-Sydney College, the Macao Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Nevada, Reno.
Previously, Dr. Walker was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and at the Division on Addiction at Cambridge Health Alliance. He was also a Research Fellow at the UNLV International Center for Gaming Regulation.
Dr. Walker holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Auburn University and a B.S. in Business Administration from Kansas State University.