A really interesting paper courtesy of Brad Plumer of the Washington Post.
How popular is soccer? Popular enough to bring financial markets to a halt, it seems. A new paper (pdf) from the European Central Bank finds that during the 2010 World Cup, the number of stock trades plunged an average of 45 percent in countries whose teams were playing at the time. (A goal caused a further 5 percent drop.) “We conclude,” write Michael Ehrmann and David-Jan Jansen, “that stock markets were following developments on the soccer pitch rather than in the trading pit.”
But something tells me that FIFA isn’t going to publicize this paper by telling everyone, “Thanks to the World Cup billions of dollars of financial transactions are lost every four years.
I was in Italy when the world cup was played there in 1990. The entire country stopped when the Italian team played. Even the criminals. There was no traffic. Commerce ceased other than in bars and restaurants that had tvs.
I pretty relaxed that at least once every four years my mutual funds
stop being churned . There is evidence that males’ exam results
are worse in years with major international football tournaments.
Actually Vic, in the modern era where there is so much general public disillusionment with the financial sector, perhaps this IS a finding worth publicizing.