The Olympic Effect

The potential benefits from Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics extend even beyond the Washington Park beautification project. A new paper by Andrew Rose and Mark Spiegel finds that hosting mega-events like the Olympics has a significant positive impact on a country’s exports. Interestingly, the authors also find that even unsuccessful Olympic bids have a positive effect on exports, concluding that the impact is attributable to the signal a country sends when bidding to host the games. (HT: Marginal Revolution) [%comments]