Growth Impact of Major Sporting Events

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we analyse the impact of organizing major sporting events on economic growth. We present ex-post-cross-country event results for the Summer Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup. Both descriptive statistics of the relation between the timing of events and economic growth and estimation results of a panel growth model that incorporates both regular growth determinants and the timing of major sports events are presented. We observe that the Summer Olympic Games stimulate per capita GDP (gross domestic product)-growth, while the FIFA World Cup does not.