Nistler CoBPA Faculty Research

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Dr. Steve Light featured speaker in Macau

Dr. Steve Light was a featured speaker at the Eleventh Annual Conference on the Legal Reforms of Macau in the Global Context, organized by the Center for Law Studies and the Faculty of Law at the University of Macau. Steve and his frequent co-author, Kathryn Rand, were among roughly a dozen experts from around the world, including Macau, France, Portugal, and Mozambique. Light and Rand were the sole U.S. speakers invited and sponsored to appear by the Conference, which encouraged dialogue among scholars and officials from the public, private, and non-profit sector.

The Conference developed global perspectives on the legal, policy, and economic dimensions of Macau’s regulatory framework for its $33 billion gaming industry. With its gaming licenses up for renewal within the next couple of years, officials in Macau are considering what comes next for a dynamic industry that now comprises 70 percent of the public revenue in the “Gaming Capitol of the World.”

The Conference featured simultaneous real-time translation in Portuguese, Chinese, and English, the three languages in which Conference papers also will be published. Light and Rand developed a comparative account of the U.S. model of licensing for commercial and tribal gaming operations, and also delivered insights on overcoming barriers to entry into now-booming sports betting markets, to inform decision making in Macau.