Illuminating the world cup effect: Night lights evidence from South Africa

Gregor Pfeifer, Fabian Wahl and Martyna Marczak

No 16-2016, Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences from University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Abstract: This paper evaluates the economic impact of the $14 billion preparatory investments for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. We use satellite data on night light luminosity at municipality and electoral district level as a proxy for economic development, applying synthetic control methods for estimation. For the average World Cup municipality, we find significantly positive, short-run effects before the tournament, corresponding to a reduction of unemployment by 1.3 percentage points. At the electoral district level, we reveal distinct effect heterogeneity, where especially investments in transport infrastructure are shown to have long-lasting, positive effects, particularly in more rural areas.

Keywords: Football World Cup; Public Infrastructure; Development; Night Lights Data; Synthetic Control Methods; Mega Sports Events; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 O18 R11 R42 Z28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-spo, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/147304/1/871669099.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Illuminating the World Cup effect: Night lights evidence from South Africa (2018)
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:zbw:hohdps:162016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences from University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().