Should Cities Go for the Gold? The Long‐Term Impacts of Hosting the Olympics
19 Pages Posted: 5 Jul 2012
Date Written: July 2012
Abstract
The Summer Olympics bring hundreds of thousands of visitors and generate upward of $10 billion in spending for the host city. This large influx of tourism dollars is only part of the overall impact of hosting the Olympic Games. In order to host the visitors and sporting events, cities must make sizable investments in infrastructure such as airports, arenas, and highways. Additionally, the publicity and international exposure of a host city may benefit international trade and capital flows. Proponents argue that this investment will pay off through increased economic growth, but research confirming these claims is lacking. This paper examines whether hosting an Olympiad improves a city's long‐term growth. In order to control for the self‐selection of cities that host Olympic Games, this paper matches Olympic host cities with cities that were finalists for the Olympic Games, but were not selected by the International Olympic Committee. A difference‐in‐difference estimator examines post‐Olympic impacts for host cities between 1950 and 2005. Regression results provide no long‐term impacts of hosting an Olympics on two measures of population, real Gross Domestic Product per capita and trade openness.
JEL Classification: O18, R11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
By Alberto F. Alesina, William Easterly, ...
-
By Alberto F. Alesina, William Easterly, ...
-
An African Success Story: Botswana
By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, ...
-
An African Success Story: Botswana
By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, ...
-
The Economic Value of Cultural Diversity: Evidence from Us Cities