Seemingly Irrelevant Events Affect Economic Perceptions and Expectations: The FIFA World Cup 2006 as a Natural Experiment

Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffman and Uwe Sunde

No 2275, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Prominent economic theories have emphasized the role of commonly held perceptions and expectations for determining macroeconomic outcomes. A key empirical question is how such collectively held beliefs are formed. We use the FIFA World Cup 2006 as a natural experiment. We provide direct evidence that seemingly irrelevant events (the outcomes of soccer matches) can systematically affect individual perceptions about economic prospects, both on a personal and economy-wide level.

Keywords: expectation formation; sunspots; soccer world cup; macroeconomic outcomes; psychology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D0 D8 E0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2006-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-exp, nep-mac and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp2275.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2275

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().