Hey, look, it’s another headline — this one in the Washington Post — claiming that hosting a sporting event would have huge benefits for a city:

The 2018 MLB All-Star Game could bring $100 million to D.C., economists say

If you actually read the article, only one economist is cited — Anirban Basu of Sage Policy, a consulting firm — who says that the All-Star Game has averaged $60 to 100 million in “economic impact.” (Remember, “impact” isn’t actual public revenues, it’s just money that changes hands in your city.) That seemed high to me, so I checked in with College of the Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson to see if he knew of any other studies. And lo and behold, he actually co-wrote one in 2001. It’s a bit involved in terms of stats and regression analysis, but in short, it says: Once you control for all the other variables that you’d expect to cause economic growth (as seen in other comparable cities), the actual impact of the MLB All-Star Game appears to be negative:

Our detailed regression analysis reveals that during the period 1973 to 1997, All-Star Game cities had employment growth below that which would have been expected. Instead of an expected gain of around 1,000 jobs in the year a city hosts an All-Star Game, employment numbers in host cities have actually fallen more than 8,000 jobs below what would have been expected even without the promised $60 million All-Star boost. Is this one study, which looked at All-Star Games from 1973 to 1997, absolutely conclusive? No, of course not. But if journalists are going to assert that “economists” think something, they might want to at least google for what economists think, or even put in an email to one who’s actually studied it. (Matheson replied to my query within a couple of hours. On a Saturday.) Instead, the Post’s Alex Schiffer appears to have only contact (or read a press release by) Basu, a guy who says this stuff about the All-Star Game every year, and who appears to come up with his numbers just by assuming every ticket sold is new money to the economy, and then slapping on a multiplier. But then, Schiffer appears to be on the reprinting corporate press releases beat, so maybe we should cut him some slack … nah.