Entertainment as Crime Prevention: Evidence from Chicago Sports Games

Algunos estudios han encontrado que ciertos eventos deportivos están correlacionados con incrementos en niveles de violencia, sobro todo doméstica. Un nuevo estudio encuentra que cuando se transmiten eventos deportivos el crimen disminuye, el estudio se hizo en Chicago. Muy probablemente algo similar pasa con la violencia y/o el crimen en América Latina durante el mundial de fútbol. Una implicación es que al menos cierto tipo de crimen se hace con propósitos recreativos. 

The concern that mass media may be responsible for aggressive and criminal behavior is widespread. Comparatively little consideration has been given to its potential diversionary function. This paper contributes to the emerging body of literature on entertainment as a determinant of crime by analyzing Chicago by-the-minute crime reports during major sporting events. Sports provide an exogenous infusion of TV diversion that we leverage to test the effect of entertainment on crime. Because the scheduling of a sporting event should be random with respect to crime within a given month, day of the week, and time, we use month-time-day-of-week fixed effects to estimate the effect of the sporting events on crime. We compare crime reports by the half hour when Chicago’s NFL, NBA, or MLB teams are playing to crime reports at the same time, day, and month when the teams are not playing. We conduct the same analysis for the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and MLB World Series. The Super Bowl generates the most dramatic declines: total crime reports decrease by approximately 25 percent (roughly 60 fewer crimes). The decline is partially offset by an increase in crime before the game, most notably in drug and prostitution reports, and an uptick in reports of violent crime immediately after the game. Crime during Chicago Bears Monday night football games is roughly 15 percent lower (30 fewer crimes) than during the same time on non-game nights. Our results show similar but smaller effects for NBA and MLB games. Except for the Super Bowl, we find little evidence for temporal crime displacement before or after the games. In general, we find substantial declines during games across crime types – property, violent, drug, and other – with the largest reductions for drug crime. We believe fewer potential offenders on the streets largely explain the declines in crime.

The paper is by Games Ryan Copus & Hannah Laqueur. 

Athletics and Democracy in ancient Greece

In the present essay we examine whether and how sports affected the emergence of democracy as a political phenomenon in Classical Greece. To achieve this we introduce in a model the concept of macroculture as a complex of mutually supporting values, norms and beliefs in various areas of human activity, like athletics, war, politics, etc. Then, we proceed through a historical review on the history of sports in Ancient Greece and we investigate various aspects of how and under which terms athletics performed during classical Greece, predominantly, in ancient Athens. We found that the values that gradually emerged through sports during an extended period that goes back as far as the Bronze Age times, led to the development of an environment of mutually supporting norms and values such as equality and trust, that by being correlated and coordinated each other, led to the creation of new values and norms, as the theory of macroculture proposes. We also found that these new values were “diffused” from athletics to the field of politics and played a key role to the emergence of democracy.

That is from a paper by Economou and Kyriazis. 

HT: Fabio Sabatini.

Sports and Student Achievement

We consider the relationship between collegiate football success and non-athlete student performance. We find that the team's success significantly reduces male grades relative to female grades, and only in fall quarters, which coincides with the football season. Using survey data, we find that males are more likely than females to increase alcohol consumption, decrease studying, and increase partying in response to the success of the team. Yet, females also report that their behavior is affected by athletic success, suggesting that their performance is likely impaired but that this effect is masked by the practice of grade curving.

That is from the paper "Are Big-Time Sports a Threat to Student Achievement?" by Lindo, Swensen, and Waddell (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012). A draft is here.

Economic Effects of Mega Sporting Events

This paper examines the short and long term effects of the Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics, and the World Cup on the economy of the host country. We find that selection for hosting the Summer Olympics only produces a significant positive announcement period effect in the host country’s domestic equity market. This effect however resides solely in the construction and building materials industry. We further show that the Summer Olympic game hosting nations generate significant positive economic performance up to 3 years prior to hosting the event, while this positive economic performance disappears 1 year after hosting such an event. Our results suggest that contrary to the conventional claims by mega sports organizers, it appears that there are no significant long-run economic gains from hosting such mega sporting events.

The authors conclude:

Our results suggest that unlike the common claims by mega sports organizers, the economic benefits for hosting a mega sporting event are limited. Summer Olympics may stimulate the domestic economy prior to hosting such an event. However, it appears that there are no significant long-run economic gains from hosting any of the three mega sporting events.

At least the authors do not argue that the organizers lose money. See the paper (Ferris et al July 2012) here. 

Sports and happiness

We investigate the relationship between participation in physical activity and self reported happiness in the United States. IV estimates based on data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System between 2005 and 2009 and County Business Patterns indicate that individuals living in a county with greater access to sports facilities are more likely to participate in physical activity and also report higher life satisfaction. Both men and women gain happiness from participation, and men appear to benefit more from participation than women.

That is from the paper "Sports participation and happiness: Evidence from US microdata," by Huang and Humphreys (Journal of Economic Psychology, August 2012).  

Obviously this has policy implications. But, does building a gym create more happiness than building a hospital?