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

Armin Falk, Thomas Dohmen, Uwe Sunde and David Huffman

No 5851, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

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)
Date: 2006-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-mac and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP5851 (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:cpr:ceprdp:5851

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP5851

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().