Doing Business On Indian Reservations: Tribal Business Owners' Perspectives On Entrepreneurship

This paper examines the barriers and opportunities shaping entrepreneurship on Native American reservations using insights from focus groups and empirical analysis. We document key constraints that hinder business formation, including governance inefficiencies, limited access to capital, and labor shortages. To quantify institutional quality, we introduce the Reservation Economic Freedom Index (REFI), which measures governance transparency, judicial independence, regulatory stability, and economic openness across reservations. Our findings indicate a strong positive relationship between economic freedom and prosperity: reservations with higher REFI scores exhibit significantly higher median household incomes. Moreover, prior research suggests that judicial reforms, such as law-trained judges and jury trials, contribute to income growth over time. These results highlight the role of institutional quality in fostering entrepreneurship and economic development in Indian Country. While institutional change is gradual, targeted reforms in governance, legal frameworks, and self-governance mechanisms can enhance economic opportunities while respecting tribal sovereignty.

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