7/5/2012: At some point in the next few years the UO athletic department will announce plans for an expansion of Autzen stadium and Hayward field. We can expect that they will argue that sports has spillover economic benefits for Eugene. This is a dubious idea theoretically, since when people spend more on sports they spend less on other things. And it is not supported by the evidence. From a paper on NFL stadiums by the economist Kurt Rothoff:
Public subsidies for professional sports stadiums are often used as a means to stimulate economic development in local communities. Economic impact studies, as well as the politicians pushing them, claim that stadiums will induce job creation and revenue expansion. Using data on metropolitan statistical areas, academics find little to support the claims that stadiums help create jobs and increase the income in the local economy. This paper adds to the current literature by using detailed county level data to analyze the effect of a stadium on a smaller area around the stadium.
This study finds that employment within these industries (clothing, drinking, food, hotel, and liquor) have mixed results when a franchise is present, this is consistent with Coates and Humphrey’s (2003). However, although most of the payroll data is insignificant, the coefficients that are significant are all negative. This also supports Coates and Humphrey’s (2003) findings that real per capita income falls when sports franchises are present.
A study on economic effects NFL stadia located in large metropolitan areas have is related to college stadia located on college campuses how exactly?
The correlation is obviously greater than zero, but less than one.
Have you ever seen the Lane County Sheriff Office vans over at Autzen? Yes, it’s true: They actually use prisoner labor to do some of the heavy landscaping jobs. I can’t imagine that is good for “employment”.
Cleaning public grounds is an excellent use of labor from those sentenced to community service for misdemeanor crimes.
This isn’t “cleaning pubic grounds”….This is using prison labor for what is essentially a private for-profit enterprise (UO Nike Athletics) which comes at the expense of the UO hiring and employing people in the community to do it. The UO pays the Sheriffs office $500-$800 bucks for each van of prisoners they provide.
If we were talking about cleaning up the Willamette River or many other public service projects, I might agree with you. But, this is the UO buying cheap prisoner labor at the expense of jobs in our community.