Economic Multipliers and Mega-Event Analysis (Report‪)‬

Introduction Economists often criticize economic impact studies that purport to show that mega-events such as the Olympics, World Cup, or other sports championships such as the Super Bowl bring large benefits to the communities "lucky" enough to host them. These scholars frequently cite the use of inappropriate multipliers as one of the primary reasons why these impact studies overstate the economic gains to the hosts of these events (see Siegfried and Zimbalist (2000), Crompton (1995), or Baade and Matheson (2001) among others). Porter and Fletcher (2008) echo these concerns, going so far as to note that most academic journals will not publish economic impact studies generated using the most commonly used software packages.