Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data

Paul Dolan, Georgios Kavetsos, Christian Krekel, Dimitris Mavridis, Robert Metcalfe (), Claudia Senik, Stefan Szymanski and Nicolas Ziebarth ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Hosting the Olympic Games costs billions of taxpayer dollars. Following a quasi-experimental setting, this paper assesses the intangible impact of the London 2012 Olympics, using a novel panel of 26,000 residents in London, Paris, and Berlin during the summers of 2011, 2012, and 2013. We show that hosting the Olympics increases subjective well-being of the host city's residents during the event, particularly around the times of the opening and closing ceremonies. However, we do not find much evidence for legacy effects. Estimating residents' implicit willingness-to-pay for the event, we do not find that it was worth it for London alone, but a modest well-being impact on the rest of the country would make hosting worth the costs.

Keywords: Subjective well-being; Life satisfaction; Happiness; Intangible effects; Olympic Games; Sport events; Quasi-natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I30 I31 I38 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2019-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-dcm, nep-hap, nep-isf and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published in Journal of Public Economics, 1, September, 2019, 177. ISSN: 0047-2727

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/101387/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data (2019)
Working Paper: Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data (2019)
Working Paper: Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data (2019)
Working Paper: Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data (2019)
Working Paper: Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data (2019)
Working Paper: Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data (2019)
Working Paper: Quantifying the Intangible Impact of the Olympics Using Subjective Well-Being Data (2019)
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