# Europe

2020
Hausmann, R., Nedelkoska, L. & Noor, S., 2020. You Get What You Pay for: Sources and Consequences of the Public Sector Premium in Albania and Sri Lanka.Abstract

We study the factors behind the public sector premium in Albania and Sri Lanka, the group heterogeneity in the premium, the sources of public sector wage compression, and the impact of this compression on the way individuals self-select between the public and the private sector. Similar to other countries, the public sectors in Albania and Sri Lanka pay higher wages than the private sector, for all but the most valued employees. While half of the premium of Sri Lanka and two-thirds of it in Albania are explained by differences in the occupation-education-experience mix between the sectors, and the level of private sector informality, the unexplained part of the premium is significant enough to affect the preferences of working in the public sector for different groups. We show that the compressed distributions of public sector wages and benefits create incentives for positive sorting into the public sector among most employees, and negative sorting among the most productive ones.

2019
Neffke, F., 2019. The Value of Complementary Coworkers. Science Advances , 5 (12). Publisher's VersionAbstract

As individuals specialize in specific knowledge areas, a society’s know-how becomes distributed across different workers. To use this distributed know-how, workers must be coordinated into teams that, collectively, can cover a wide range of expertise. This paper studies the interdependencies among co-workers that result from this process in a population-wide dataset covering educational specializations of millions of workers and their co-workers in Sweden over a 10-year period. The analysis shows that the value of what a person knows depends on whom that person works with. Whereas having co-workers with qualifications similar to one’s own is costly, having co-workers with complementary qualifications is beneficial. This co-worker complementarity increases over a worker’s career and offers a unifying framework to explain seemingly disparate observations, answering questions such as “Why do returns to education differ so widely?” “Why do workers earn higher wages in large establishments?” “Why are wages so high in large cities?”

Frank Neffke discusses his findings in this Growth Lab Podcast.

Bahar, D., et al., 2019. Migration and Post-conflict Reconstruction: The Effect of Returning Refugees on Export Performance in the Former Yugoslavia.Abstract
During the early 1990s Germany offered temporary protection to over 700,000 Yugoslavian refugees fleeing war. By 2000, many had been repatriated. We exploit this natural experiment to investigate the role of migrants in post-conflict reconstruction in the former Yugoslavia, using exports as outcome. Using confidential social security data to capture intensity of refugee workers to German industries–and exogenous allocation rules for asylum seekers within Germany as instrument—we find an elasticity of exports to return migration between 0.08 to 0.24. Our results are stronger in knowledge-intensive industries and for workers in occupations intensive in analytical and managerial skills.
Protzer, E.S.M., 2019. Social Mobility Explains Populism, Not Inequality or Culture.Abstract
What is driving contemporary populism, for example Brexit, Trump, the Gilets Jaunes, and Five-Star? Commonly-accepted answers are divided into two schools of thought, one economic and one cultural. The main explanation in the former camp is income inequality; those in the latter are social media-induced ideological polarization, unprecedented levels of immigration, and older generations reacting against millennial values. This paper exploits geographic variation in the incidence of populism to apply cross-sectional regression analysis to these arguments, and concludes that they are highly unconvincing. Instead, the thus-largely overlooked factor of social mobility is found to have far greater explanatory power. Four settings are analyzed: the 2016 US Presidential Election, the 2017 French Presidential Election, the 2019 European Parliament Elections, and the political stability of developed countries in 2018. The article contends that the decisiveness of social mobility as an explanatory variable for populism is plausibly rooted in universal human conceptions of fairness.
Revised December 2019
Rama, M., 2019. Converge and European Value Chains: How Deep Integration Can Reignite Convergence in the EU.Abstract

Convergence, the process by which poorer countries ‘catch-up’ to rich ones in terms of real incomes, is at the core of the promise of the European Union and the Eurozone. It was enshrined in the founding treaty of the EU and is at the center of policy-making today. However, after several decades of strong European growth, convergence across many core countries has come to a halt. Policymaking has focused on promoting greater integration between EU countries and in particular within the Eurozone to foster further convergence but the political gridlock has stopped these initiatives from moving forward.

Further economic and political integration is not necessary for, and may in fact be orthogonal to, greater convergence in the EU. EU countries have converged at roughly the same rate as non-EU countries since the 1950s, suggesting EU membership is not responsible for convergence. Further, there is no statistically significant difference in the rate of convergence between EA 12 or EA19 members before and after the introduction of the Euro. Finally, many current Eurozone members have converged in the last 10 years suggesting that the Euro structure does not impede convergence. Still, further integration may be desirable in the EU – not least to restore the union to its democratic ideals.

The only variable that is associated with greater convergence in European countries is value chain integration, particularly upstream integration. Upstream integration is domestic value added embodied in intermediate exports that are re-processed abroad. High upstream integration indicates strong participation in value chains and integration into regional production networks. The level of upstream integration varies tremendously within the EU, going from 10% of GDP in Spain to 28% of GDP in Estonia. Once we control for the level of upstream integration, the rate of converge in European countries goes from 1.25% to 4.5%.

High growth countries are deeply integrated in sub-regional supply chains within Europe. Europe is often thought of as a single supply chain but, in fact, there are several sub-regional supply chains within Europe. These sub-regional supply chains are based on strong bilateral ties between neighboring countries. Participation in one of these supply chains appears to matter more for growth than integration with any particular country (e.g. Germany) or to any specific region. Participation in these supply chains is independent of EU membership – it is due to historical ties and deliberate national policymaking.

The EU must put cross-country collaboration at the core Horizon Europe– its €100B mission driven innovation programme – to future-proof European supply chains and reintegrate lagging countries. Horizon Europe is the EU’s bet to become a global technology leader. Leading in technology involves not only innovation but also developing the supply chains of the future that allow innovation to be commercially successful. Horizon Europe will not succeed if innovation spending continues occur in national siloes as it did in the Horizon 2020 programme. The EU must pro-actively manage and integrate innovation efforts across the Union and ensure that commercialization occurs at the EU level. Only then can we hope to achieve both EU technological leadership and convergence within the EU.

2018
Hausmann, R. & Neffke, F., 2018. The workforce of pioneer plants: The role of worker mobility in the diffusion of industries. Research Policy. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Does technology require labour mobility to diffuse? To explore this, we use German social-security data and ask how plants that pioneer an industry in a location – and for which the local labour market offers no experienced workers – assemble their workforces. These pioneers use different recruiting strategies than plants elsewhere: they hire more workers from outside their industry and from outside their region, especially when workers come from closely related industries or are highly skilled. The importance of access to experienced workers is highlighted in the diffusion of industries from western Germany to the post-reunification economy of eastern German. While manufacturing employment declined in most advanced economies, eastern German regions managed to reindustrialise. The pioneers involved in this process relied heavily on expertise from western Germany: while establishing new manufacturing industries in the East, they sourced half of their experienced workers from the West.

Originally published as CID Working Paper 310
Terzi, A., 2018. Macroeconomic Adjustment in the Euro Area.Abstract

Macroeconomic adjustment in the euro area periphery was more recessionary than pre-crisis imbalances would have warranted. To make this claim, this paper uses a Propensity Score Matching Model to produce counterfactuals for the Eurozone crisis countries (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Spain) based on over 200 past macroeconomic adjustment episodes between 1960-2010 worldwide. At its trough, between 2010 and 2015 per capita GDP had contracted on average 11 percentage points more in the Eurozone periphery than in the standard counterfactual scenario. These results are not dictated by any specific country experience, are robust to a battery of alternative counterfactual definitions, and stand confirmed when using a parametric dynamic panel regression model to account more thoroughly for the business cycle. Zooming in on the potential causes, the lack of an independent monetary policy, while having contributed to a deeper recession, does not fully explain the Eurozone’s specificity, which is instead to be identified in a sharper-than-expected contraction in investment and fiscal austerity due to high funding costs. Reading through the overall findings, there are reasons to believe that an incomplete Eurozone institutional setup contributed to aggravate the crisis through higher uncertainty.

Hausmann, R. & Nedelkoska, L., 2018. Welcome Home in a Crisis: Effects of Return Migration on the Non-migrants' Wages and Employment. European Economic Review , 101 (January 2018) , pp. 101-132. Publisher's VersionAbstract
The recent economic depression in Greece hit the population of Albanian migrants in Greece particularly hard, spurring a wave of return migration that increased the Albanian labor force by 5% in less than four years, between 2011 and 2014. We study how this return migration affected the employment chances and earnings of Albanians who never migrated. We find positive effects on the wages of low-skilled non-migrants and overall positive effects on employment. The gains partially offset the sharp drop in remittances in the observed period. An important part of the employment gains are concentrated in the agricultural sector, where most return migrants engage in self-employment and entrepreneurship. Businesses run by return migrants seem to pull Albanians from non-participation, unemployment and subsistence agriculture into commercial agriculture.
2017
Klissurski, G. & Zuccolo, B., 2017. Diversification in the Industrial Sector of Albania: Identifying Strategic Areas, Center for International Development.Abstract

In this study, we analyzed Albania’s industrial exports using the frameworks of the Product Space and Economic Complexity in order to determine which products Albania could diversify into in the near future. In particular, we identified groups of products that are technologically close to those which Albania already exports and which at the same time are technologically more sophisticated (more complex) than Albania’s average exports. This analysis does not suggest that products that do not fulfill the criteria of technological proximity and product complexity should not be invested in. However, it suggests that some products may have higher chances of succeeding in Albania because of its existing technological capabilities, while also bringing about diversification towards more complex, higher value-added production.

We find that the top two sectors that satisfy the criteria of being in close proximity to the existing technological capabilities in Albania, while also having relatively highly complex products, are Plastics/Rubbers and Agriculture/Foodstuffs. Within each of these sectors, we list more specific products that make for good candidates for diversification.

Neffke, F., Otto, A. & Weyh, A., 2017. Inter-industry Labor Flows. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization , 142 (October) , pp. 275-292. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Using German social security data, we study inter-industry labor mobility to assess how industry-specific human capital is and to determine which industries have similar human capital requirements. We find that inter-industry labor flows are highly concentrated in just a handful of industry pairs. Consequently, labor flows connect industries in a sparse network. We interpret this network as an expression of industries similarities in human capital requirements, or skill relatedness. This skill-relatedness network is stable over time, similar for different types of workers and independent of whether workers switch jobs locally or over larger distances. Moreover, in an application to regional diversification and local industry growth, skill relatedness proves to be more predictive than colocation or value chain relations. To facilitate future research, we make detailed inter-industry relatedness matrices online available.

O'Brien, T., Nedelkoska, L. & Frasheri, E., 2017. What is the Binding Constraint to Growth in Albania?, Center for International Development at Harvard University.Abstract

About four years ago, at the onset of CID’s engagement in Albania, the country faced two issues that were threatening its macro-fiscal stability: a skyrocketing public debt and an insolvent, publicly-owned electricity distribution system that was plagued by theft and technical inefficiency. These two interlinked issues constrained both short-term economic growth and the ability of the country to develop new drivers of long-term growth. Over the subsequent years, the government was able to successfully respond to these constraints through a now-concluded IMF program and through a series of reforms in the electricity sector. With these constraints now relaxed, CID saw the need for a new analysis of the current and emerging constraints to growth in Albania. This analysis will guide future research and inform the government and non-government actors on emerging economic issues for prioritization.

While growth has accelerated over the last several years, to over 3% in 2016, this is not a pace that will allow for a rapid convergence of incomes and well-being in Albania with that of developed countries in Europe and elsewhere. This growth diagnostic attempts to identify the binding constraint to sustainably higher economic growth in Albania.

Recognizing that economic growth requires a number of complementary inputs, from roads to human capital to access to finance and many more, this report compares across eight potentially binding constraints using the growth diagnostic methodology to identify which constraint is most binding. This research was conducted throughout 2016, building on prior research conducted by CID and other organizations in Albania. Each constraint discussed in this report is cited by analysts within or outside the country as the biggest problem for growth in Albania. Through the growth diagnostic framework, we are able to evaluate the evidence and show that some constraints are more binding than others.

Despite serious issues in many other areas, we find that the binding constraint to stronger growth in Albania is a lack of productive knowhow. By “knowhow,” we mean the knowledge and skills needed to produce complex goods and services. Albania faces a unique knowhow constraint that is deeply rooted in its closed-off past, and the limited diversification that has taken place in the private sector can, in nearly all cases, be linked to distinct inflows of knowhow. The strongest sources of knowhow inflows into Albania have been through foreign direct investment and immigration, especially returning members of the diaspora who start new businesses or upgrade the productivity of existing businesses.

The evidence also points to particular failings in rule of law in Albania that play an important role in keeping Albania in a low-knowhow equilibrium. Weaknesses in Albania’s rule of law institutions, including frequent policy reversals and corruption in the bureaucracy and judiciary, increase the risk of investments and transaction costs of business. While it is difficult to separate perceptions from reality in this area, both perceptions of weak rule of law and actual rule of law failings appear to play critical roles in constraining more diversified investment in Albania. We find that while existing firms in Albania successfully navigate the rule of law weaknesses, and in some cases benefit from the system, potential new investors are acutely sensitive to rule of law issues.

Hausmann, R. & Nedelkoska, L., 2017. Welcome Home in a Crisis: Effects of Return Migration on the Non-migrants' Wages and Employment.Abstract

The recent economic depression in Greece hit the population of Albanian migrants in Greece particularly hard, spurring a wave of return migration which increased the Albanian labor force by 5 percent in less than four years, between 2011 and 2014. We study how this return migration affected the employment chances and earnings of Albanians who never migrated. We find positive effects on the wages of low-skilled non-migrants and overall positive effects on employment. The gains partially offset the sharp drop in remittances in the observed period. An important part of the employment gains are concentrated in the agricultural sector, where most return migrants engage in self-employment and entrepreneurship. Businesses run by return migrants seem to pull Albanians from non-participation, unemployment and subsistence agriculture into commercial agriculture.

Neffke, F., 2017. Coworker complementarity.Abstract

How important is working with people who complement one's skills? Using administrative data that record which of 491 educational tracks each worker in Sweden absolved, I quantify the educational fit among coworkers along two dimensions: coworker match and coworker substitutability. Complementary coworkers raise wages with a comparable factor as does a college degree, whereas working with close substitutes is associated with wage penalties. Moreover, this coworker fit does not only account for large portions of the urban and large-plant wage premiums, but the returns to own schooling and the urban wage premium are almost completely contingent on finding complementary coworkers.

2016
Guven, D. & Miagkyi, M., 2016. Albania's Credit Market.Abstract

Credit market activity in Albania has been sluggish in recent years in spite of low and declining interest rates. The economy lost its growth momentum after 2009. Investment and lending activity slowed down substantially despite low interest rates, relative macroeconomic resilience, and available capacity in the private sector to take on more debt. This study analyzes the supply (lenders’) and demand (borrowers’) sides of the market.

The reason behind the credit market failure is a supply-demand mismatch. Poor financial intermediation is the main problem on the supply side. Despite excess liquidity in the financial sector, banks are excessively risk-averse, bank practices and products are unsophisticated, and non-bank financial market is underdeveloped. Excessive risk aversion translates into tight credit standards, credit rationing and credit crunch for some economic sectors, in particular those dominated by SMEs. On the demand side, firms overall have a low appetite to expand, limited capacity to create bankable and financially viable projects, and are also constrained by infrastructural gaps and economic uncertainty. The mismatch results from the fragmentation of the credit market, with reliable borrowers from traditional sectors having easy access to finance, and other segments being almost fully deprived of credit.

Government and donor-led policies to mitigate the problem have had little success. Albania enjoys access to a number of domestic and external funding schemes primarily focused on alleviating funding constraints for credit-deprived sectors, but these programs have been ineffective. Further study is needed to understand the reasons behind the limited success of these programs.

A National Development Bank (NDB) could address some of the observed credit market challenges. While an NDB’s ability to directly resolve demand-side constraints would be limited, an NDB could effectively tackle supply-side constraints in the credit market as well as provide surveillance and collect information from the private sector, leverage technical assistance, and develop tailored financial products. Establishing an NDB should be considered carefully, taking into account functional, governance, funding, staffing and other risk factors.

O'Clery, N., 2016. A Tale of Two Clusters: The Evolution of Ireland’s Economic Complexity since 1995. Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland , XLV 2015-16 , pp. 16-66. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper characterizes the evolution of the manufacturing and industrial export structure of Ireland since 1995 within the framework of Economic Complexity and the Product Space. We observe a high level of specialisation in Ireland’s export structure, coupled with high income per capita as compared to the complexity level of its industrial activities (as captured by its Economic Complexity Index). We identify a dual structure within the economy, with domestic and foreign-owned exporters exhibiting distinct characteristics. In the latter case, we observe a recent consolidation and reduction in complexity level by the foreign-owned high tech pharmaceuticals and electronics sectors, with limited evidence of spill-overs leading to growth of domestic firms in these sectors. This contrasts with a dynamic and growing domestic food and agriculture sector, which is well positioned for continued expansion of Ireland’s indigenous activities into more complex goods. Finally, we illustrate this framework as a tool for policy-makers by identifying some potential new sectors that share many inputs with Ireland’s current domestic capability base, and could increase Ireland’s complexity level for future growth.
Frasheri, E., 2016. Of Knights and Squires: European Union and the Modernization of Albania.Abstract

In this paper, I question the idea that a country develops and democratizes merely by pursuing a model of deeper regional integration with more prosperous countries. I examine the case of Albania’s integration into the European Union to show that more often than not, transition reproduces hierarchies and inequities that usually underpin relations between a prosperous center and a backward periphery. Instead of being a cure, a solution to the political primitivism and underdevelopment, the story with Europeanization as a model of modernization suggests that despite noble intentions and goals, reforms in the name of the European Union end up foregrounding a security state apparatus, impose an ideological hegemony, and maintain a political culture that inhibits democratization, while discouraging and displacing the need for endogenous growth strategies.

This paper is published in the North Carolina Journal of International Law (Volume 42, Issue 1)

Frasheri, E., 2016. Of Knights and Squires: European Union and the Modernization of Albania. North Carolina Journal of International Law , 42 (1) , pp. 1.Abstract

In this paper, I question the idea that a country develops and democratizes merely by pursuing a model of deeper regional integration with more prosperous countries. I examine the case of Albania’s integration into the European Union to show that more often than not, transition reproduces hierarchies and inequities that usually underpin relations between a prosperous center and a backward periphery. Instead of being a cure, a solution to the political primitivism and underdevelopment, the story with Europeanization as a model of modernization suggests that despite noble intentions and goals, reforms in the name of the European Union end up foregrounding a security state apparatus, impose an ideological hegemony, and maintain a political culture that inhibits democratization, while discouraging and displacing the need for endogenous growth strategies.

Coscia, M., Hausmann, R. & Neffke, F., 2016. Exploring the Uncharted Export: An Analysis of Tourism-Related Foreign Expenditure with International Spend Data.Abstract

Tourism is one of the most important economic activities in the world: for many countries it represents the single largest product in their export basket. However, it is a product difficult to chart: "exporters" of tourism do not ship it abroad, but they welcome importers inside the country. Current research uses social accounting matrices and general equilibrium models, but the standard industry classifications they use make it hard to identify which domestic industries cater to foreign visitors. In this paper, we make use of open source data and of anonymized and aggregated transaction data giving us insights about the spend behavior of foreigners inside two countries, Colombia and the Netherlands, to inform our research. With this data, we are able to describe what constitutes the tourism sector, and to map the most attractive destinations for visitors. In particular, we find that countries might observe different geographical tourists' patterns - concentration versus decentralization -; we show the importance of distance, a country's reported wealth and cultural affinity in informing tourism; and we show the potential of combining open source data and anonymized and aggregated transaction data on foreign spend patterns in gaining insight as to the evolution of tourism from one year to another.

Russell, S., et al., 2016. Keeping One's Eye on the Ball: Exploring the Intensity of Sports Activities across Europe.Abstract

As described in Russell, Barrios & Andrews (2016), past attempts to understand the sports economy have been constrained by a number of data limitations. For instance, many of these accounts use revenues when value added measures would be more appropriate. Similarly, many accounts use top-down definitions that result in double counting and an inflated estimate of the size of the sports economy. More importantly, past accounts have focused most of their efforts estimating the overarching size of the sports economy. Constrained by aggregated data that groups a wide range of sports-related economic activities together, they primarily discuss the size of the sports-related economic activity. Their focus on answering the question of "How big?" conceals substantial differences between activities. Core sports activities, such as professional sports teams, behave very differently than activities, like sporting goods manufacturing that are closer to the periphery of the sports economy. Likewise, there are even important differences amongst core sports activities. Professional sports teams are very different than fitness facilities, and they might differ in different respects.

Guerra (2016) demonstrates that, when detailed, disaggregated data are available, the possibilities to analyze and understand the sports are greatly increased. For instance, Guerra (2016)  were able to conduct skills-based analyses, magnitude analyses, employment characterizations, geographic distribution analyses, and calculations of the intensity of sports activities. The sector disaggregation, spatial disaggregation, and database complementarity present in the Mexico data used in that paper therefore enables a more detailed and nuanced understanding of sports and sports-related economic activity.

Data with characteristics similar to those found in Mexico are few and far between. We have, unfortunately, been unable to completely escape such data limitations. However, we have compiled and analyzed a large array of employment data on sports-related economic activities in Europe. In the paper that follows, we describe our analyses of these data and the findings produced.

Section 1 begins with a discussion of employment in sports and an explanation of why we chose this variable for our analyses. Section 2 provides an overview of the data used in this paper particularly focusing on the differences between it and the Mexico data discussed in Guerra (2016). It also describes the methodology we use. We analyze these data using one of two related measures to understand the intensity of sports-related activities across different geographic areas in countries. We also construct measures at the level of a single country in order to compare across entire economies. At the international level, we adopt the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) measure that Balassa (1965) first developed to analyze international trade. Within specific countries, however, we use a population-adjusted version of the RCA measure known as RPOP. Section 3 presents the most relevant findings and Section 4 discusses their limitations. Section 5 concludes with the lessons learned and avenues for future research. While there are limitations on these analyses, they can give policymakers a better understanding of the distribution and concentration of sports across space. Such information can serve as an important input for sports-related investment decisions and other sports-related policies.

Barrios, D., Russell, S. & Andrews, M., 2016. Bringing Home the Gold? A Review of the Economic Impact of Hosting Mega-Events.Abstract

There is perhaps no larger sports policy decision than the decision to host or bid to host a mega-event like the FIFA World Cup or the Summer Olympics. Hosts and bidders usually justify their decisions by touting their potential impact. Many organizers and promoters either fund or widely disseminate ex-ante studies that tend to highlight the positive effects of the event. For instance, the consultancy firm Ernst & Young produced a 2010 report prior to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil that painted an optimistic picture of the event’s potential legacy. It estimated that an additional R$142.39 billion (4.91% of 2010 GDP) would flow through the Brazilian economy over the 2010-2014 period, generating 3.63 million jobs per year, R$ 63.48 billion (2.17% of 2010 GDP) of income for the population and additional tax collection of R\$ 18.13 billion (0.62% of 2010 GDP) for the local, state and federal governments. Ernst & Young estimated that during the same period 2.98 million additional visitors would travel to Brazil, increasing the international tourist inflow up to 79%.

Such results, if true, would clearly attractive for governments considering a bid, but these expected impacts don’t always materialize. Moreover, hosting mega-events requires significant investments - and the cost of these investments is rising. Zimbalist notes emerging economies like China, Brazil, and South Africa have increasingly perceived "mega-events as a sort of coming-out party signaling that [they are] now a modernized economy, ready to make [their] presence felt in world trade and politics" (Zimbalist 2015). Their intentions may be noble, but the intention of using mega-events as a "coming-out party" means developing countries hoping to host them need to make massive investments. They are confronted by significant obstacles in that they lack sufficient stadiums, accommodations, transportation systems, and other sports-related infrastructure. As a result, each of the mega-events hosted by emerging economies has been exorbitantly expensive. The 2014 World Cup cost Brazil between USD 15 billion and USD 20 billion, while Beijing reportedly spent USD 40 billion prior to the 2008 Summer Olympic (Zimbalist 2015). Additionally, as the debt-ridden 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal demonstrates, expensive mega-events are not limited to emerging economies alone. Flyvbjerg and Stewart have even shown that every Olympics since 1960 has gone over budget (Flyvbjerg and Stewart 2012).

Such incredible figures, in terms of both costs and benefits, beget the question: are mega-events worth it? Which type of reports should governments focus their attention on? What economic consequences should a government reasonably expect? With such high stakes, policymakers need to choose wisely. We attempt to answer these questions and aid the decisions of policymakers by providing a concise review of the rich academic literature on mega-events. For the purposes of this paper, we mainly focus on the Summer Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup as mega-events. However, we also leverage information regarding events like the Winter Olympic Games, the UEFA football championships, and the Commonwealth Games. These events are organized on a smaller scale than the previous two, but they might provide some insights on how to best understand mega-events. We focus on claims surrounding the direct or indirect mechanisms that facilitate the impact that ex-ante studies predict. We provide a review of these claims and their validity according to the existing literature.

Section 1 focuses on the argument that mega-events lead to increased economic activity in the host economy. Specifically, we evaluate whether or not mega-events leads to access to previously inaccessible funds and increased investments. These investments could theoretically come from supranational organizations, private stakeholders, or public stakeholders. We also consider whether or not these new expenditures and investments have the multiplicative effect that many ex-ante studies assume they have. We finally investigate if the economic activity surrounding mega-events leads to increased revenues and tax collection for host governments. Overall, the existing academic literature suggests that any increased economic activity resulting from the event is routinely dwarfed by additional public budgetary commitments. Moreover, the arguments regarding multiplicative effects and increased revenues also tend to be exaggerated.

Section 2 shifts the focus to the potential impact of mega-events on a specific industry: tourism. We explore the effect of mega-events on the number of tourists visiting the host region and their spending habits. We explore this channel both for analyses specific to a single mega-event and for cross-country evaluations incorporating many events. Next, we consider the impact of a mega-event on a region’s brand and image in the international community with the idea of testing if hosting the competition will impact future tourism. Finally, we consider if mega-events lead to increases in the capacity of a city or country to welcome future tourists as a result of improved airport infrastructure, accommodations, and/or transportation systems. As was true in Section 1, the academic literature suggests that the claims of many ex-ante studies are misleading. Our review finds that there is some evidence for increases in tourist arrivals to certain events, but those increases are far smaller than what is generally predicted beforehand. These effects are also usually dependent on factors, such as the timing of the competition, that are specific to the host region and the event itself.

Section 3 briefly discusses other potential qualitative and social impacts of mega-events such as international business relations, crime reduction, and the "feel-good effect." In the penultimate section, Section 4, we discuss how these conclusions should impact the decision-making of policymakers. Finally, in a short conclusion, we summarize the findings of our review.