Comment on “The Long‐Term Impacts of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games on Economic and Labor Market Outcomes”

• Date: 01 January 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12116
• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Author: Chalongphob Sussangkarn

Comment on “The Long-Term Impacts of the

1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games on

Economic and Labor Market Outcomes”

Chalongphob SUSSANGKARN†

Thailand Development Research Institute

JEL codes: J21, L83, O11, O18, R53

Hosting a major sporting event like the Olympics requires a lot of investment, so the

question about the economic impacts of the event on the local economy is an important

one. Are the returns from hosting such an event worth the money spent? During the

period of the event, thousands of athletes, coaches, media, and millions of sport fans

travel to the venues and attend the games. This can generate sizeable revenues for the

host country and particularly the host city and surrounding areas. Once the games are

over, only the facilities remain, so what are the longer term impacts of hosting the event?

Miyoshi and Sasaki (2016) analyze the long-term economic impact of the Nagano

Winter Olympic Games using the synthetic control method. Basically, the area most

affected by the preparation and holding of the games is the treatment area, and other

areas (mainly other prefectures) are control areas. A synthetic control area was con-

structed as a weighted combination of the control areas (with non-negative weights

summing to one) that gave a good fit to the treatment area in the period before treat-

ment. After the treatment, the actual development (over about a decade) of the treated

area was compared with the development of the synthetic control area, which can be

regarded as how the treated area would havede velopedhad there been no treatment. The

significance of the difference that arises was judged through placebo experiments assum-

ing that other control areas were the treated area (placebo treatment) and comparing the

results to the case of the treated area. If the difference between the treated area and the

synthetic area turns out to be rather larger than those from the placebo experiments,

then this can be taken as a significant long-term impact of the treatment.

Miyoshi and Sasaki find that the Nagano Olympics had significant long-term impacts

on GDP and population (slightly), but not on the GDP per capita of the treated area.

Analyses by sector found that the services and real estate sectors had long-term benefits,

while construction did not. Impacts on labor market outcomes,measured by the jobs-to-

applicants ratio, applicant ratio, and vacancy ratio (the latter two compared to the

working-age population) at local employment service centers also turned out not to be

significant.

†Correspondence: Chalongphob Sussangkarn, Thailand Development Research Institute, 565 Soi

Ramkhamhaeng 39, Wangthonglang District, Bangkok 10310, Thailand. Email: chalongp@

tdri.or.th

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doi: 10.1111/aepr.12116 Asian Economic Policy Review (2016) 11, 66–67

© 2016 Japan Center for Economic Research66