Earl Grinols

Who is Earl Grinols?

Earl Grinols is Distinguished Professor of Economics at Baylor University. His research includes the effect of legalized casinos in the United States and the economics of a national health care policy.

He attended the University of Minnesota for undergraduate study where he was a James B. Angell scholar, and received two summa cum laude degrees from the University of Minnesota in economics and mathematics. He earned his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977.

Grinols has taught at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois in addition to Baylor University. He has worked at the Department of the Treasury and was a Senior Economist with the Council of Economic Advisors.

In 1994 testimony to Congress, Grinols was one of the first academicians to recommend the formation of a national commission on gambling. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission was formed two years later in 1996, and issued its report, among other recommendations calling for a moratorium on the expansion of gambling in the United States in 1999.

In 2004 Grinols' book, Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits was published by Cambridge University Press. His work "Casinos, Crime, and Community Costs" studied all 3,165 counties in the United States for a twenty-year period to establish statistical links between casinos and FBI Index I crime.