Brazil may have never wanted for places to play soccer, but that didn’t stop the country from spending billions of dollars on stadiums for last month’s World Cup. The Arena Amazonia, a $300 million edifice designed to look like a woven basket, was built in a rain-forest city where the professional team regularly draws fewer than 2,000 fans per game. And Brazil is only getting started. The country, which is also hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, has embarked on an infrastructure splurge that may top $25 billion. The spending is meant to underscore Brazil’s emergence as an economic power. The country’s leaders insist that it’s also intended to increase the nation’s prosperity.
巴西可能从来都不缺踢足球的地方，不过它仍然为上个月举行的世界杯花费了数十亿美元修建体育馆。庞大的亚马逊竞技场(The Arena Amazonia)耗资3亿美元，外形看起来像一个编织篮，它建在一个雨林城市，那里的职业球队每场比赛一般吸引不到2000人。而且巴西才刚刚开始。它将在里约热内卢举办2016年夏季奥运会，基础设施建设方面的挥霍已经开始了，总额可达250亿美元。这些花费意在突显巴西是个新兴经济强国。该国的领导人们坚持认为，这也有利于国家的繁荣。
The idea that big sporting events are good for growth is relatively new. A 1956 article in this newspaper noted the curious hopes of Australian officials who were “somewhat optimistic” that visitors to the Melbourne Olympics might settle in the city, or perhaps do a little business there. “Ordinarily,” it said, “being host for the Olympic Games is unlikely to gain a nation much beyond prestige.” But as the cost of hosting rose inexorably, so did the supposed benefits. The Olympics and the World Cup are now routinely described as economic engines. Four American cities — Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington — recently announced that they were flirting with hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics, and in each case a justification was economic development. In Massachusetts, a state-appointed commission led by a construction executive suggested that a Boston Olympiad could “catalyze and accelerate the economic-development and infrastructure improvements necessary to ensure that Massachusetts can compete globally now and into the future.”
大型体育赛事有利于经济增长是个相对较新的观念。本报1956年的一篇文章指出，澳大利亚的官员们“颇为乐观”，奇怪地期望来观看墨尔本奥运会的游客们可能会在这个城市定居，或者在这里做点生意。文章说，“一般来讲，举办奥运会不大可能给主办国带来声誉之外的很多东西。”但是随着举办成本节节攀升，人们对于从中获益的期望也在上升。奥运会和世界杯现在一般被描述为经济引擎。美国的四个城市——波士顿、洛杉矶、旧金山和华盛顿——最近宣布它们有举办2024年夏季奥运会的想法，每个城市都给出的一个理由是为了促进经济发展。在马萨诸塞州，一个州政府任命、建筑经理领导的委员会认为，在波士顿举办奥运会能“促进和加速经济发展，改善基础设施，保证马萨诸塞州现在和未来具有全球竞争力”。
Such claims are based on the idea that the Games can serve as a tourist attraction, a chance to catch the eye of global business leaders and a way to rally political support for valuable infrastructure projects. The lean and profitable 1984 Los Angeles Olympics are often invoked. So are the 1992 Barcelona Games, which amplified that city’s revival.
这些论点是基于这样的观念：奥运会能作为一个旅游吸引点，吸引全球商业领袖的目光，争取政府对重要基础设施项目的支持。成本低、赚钱多的1984年洛杉矶奥运会经常被用来作为例证。1992年的巴塞罗那奥运会也促进了那座城市的复兴。
But there is strikingly little evidence that such events increase tourism or draw new investment. Spending lavishly on a short-lived event is, economically speaking, a dubious long-term strategy. Stadiums, which cost a lot and produce minimal economic benefits, are a particularly lousy line of business. (This is why they are usually built by taxpayers rather than by corporations.) And even though Brazil, like other recent hosts, has sought to make stadium spending more palatable by also building general infrastructure, like highways and airports, the public would derive the same benefit at far less cost if the transportation projects were built and the stadiums were not. The Los Angeles Olympics were successful, after all, because planners avoided building new stadiums. Barcelona, long neglected under the rule of Francisco Franco, was in the midst of a renaissance that would have probably occurred without the Olympics.
但是，却罕有证据可以证明这样的赛事能促进旅游业或者带来新的投资。从经济学的角度讲，在一个短期赛事上大肆挥霍是个不太可靠的长期策略。修建体育馆成本高昂，却产生不了什么经济效益，所以是一项特别糟糕的投资（所以它们通常不是公司修建的，而是用纳税人的钱修建的）。虽然巴西和最近的其他主办国一样，同时修建一般性的基础设施，比如高速公路和机场，好让修建体育馆的开支更容易让人接受，但是如果只建交通项目，不建体育馆，公众能花少得多的钱获得同样的利益。毕竟，洛杉矶奥运会之所以成功是因为策划者避免修建新体育馆。在佛朗哥时期长期被忽视的巴塞罗那本来就在复兴之中，即使不举办奥运会，它也同样会复兴。
Organizers and their supporters routinely neglect what economists call “opportunity costs” — in this case, what might have happened if a country didn’t host the Games. In some of the world’s most expensive cities, perhaps the greatest opportunity cost is the loss of scarce and valuable real estate. While many facilities remain in use after the Games or are converted for new purposes, quite a few sit virtually as empty as the original in Olympia, Greece. Tourists can ride a Segway around the Bird’s Nest in Beijing for $20.
组织者和支持者们通常会忽视经济学家们所说的“机会成本”——这里所指的就是如果这个国家没有举办奥运会会发生什么。在世界上最昂贵的一些城市，也许最大的机会成本就是失去了稀缺、宝贵的地产。虽然很多设施在奥运会后仍在使用或改作新用途，但也有不少设施实际上和希腊奥林匹亚最初的竞技场一样是空闲着的。在北京，游客们花20美元能骑着电动车绕“鸟巢”转一圈。
Similarly, it’s misleading to calculate how much money is spent in a city during the Olympics. A fair comparison requires some estimate of how much would have been spent without them. When the Games come, after all, other kinds of tourism go. During the 2012 Games, the Adelphi Theatre in London’s West End suspended performances of “Sweeney Todd.” The British Museum received 480,000 visitors that August, down from 617,000 the previous year. Indeed, Britain received about 5 percent fewer foreign visitors in August 2012 than it did in the same month the previous year. Those who showed up spent more, sure, but London spent billions of dollars to lure them. “If Boston hosts the 2024 Olympics, there’s no doubt that [the city] is going to be overrun with sports tourists,” said Victor Matheson, an economist at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. “But Boston is already overrun with tourists in the summer.”
同样地，只计算奥运会期间人们在主办城市消费了多少钱也是一种误导。公平起见，应该也估算一下如果没有举办奥运会人们会消费多少钱。毕竟奥运会开始后，其他种类的旅游就减少了。在2012年奥运会期间，伦敦西区的艾德菲剧院(Adelphi Theatre)暂停了《理发师陶德》(Sweeney Todd)的演出。大英博物馆当年8月接待游客48万人次，低于前一年同期的61.7万人次。实际上，2012年8月英国接待的外国游客比前一年同月减少了约5%。当然，那些游客消费得更多，但为了吸引他们，伦敦花了数十亿美元。“如果波士顿举办2024年奥运会，（这座城市）肯定会挤满体育游客，”马萨诸塞州圣十字学院(College of the Holy Cross)的经济学家维克托·马西森(Victor Matheson)说，“但是波士顿在夏季本来就有很多游客。”
Many hosts, of course, don’t care all that much about breaking even. The Olympics have always been a debutante’s ball for emerging economies, from Japan in 1964 and Germany in 1972 to China in 2008 and Russia in February. And there is some evidence that it works. Countries that host the Olympics experience a significant increase in trade, according to a 2009 study by Andrew K. Rose, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and Mark M. Spiegel, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. But their research determined that this was also true of countries that made losing bids for the Olympics — spending tens of millions rather than billions. The benefit, in other words, came from the signal that a country was open for business, not from the spending itself. “One city thinks winning the Games is worth more than all the other cities do,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College and the author of the coming “Circus Maximus: The Economics of Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup.” “And that city is likely to be making an error.”
当然，很多主办国并不怎么在意保持收支平衡。对新兴经济体来说，奥运会一直就像元媛舞会，从1964年的日本、1972年的德国、2008年的中国到今年2月的俄罗斯。有些证据能证明它是有效的。根据加州大学伯克利分校的经济学家安德鲁·K·罗斯(Andrew K. Rose)和旧金山联邦储备银行的经济学家马克·M·施皮格尔(Mark M. Spiegel)在2009年的一项研究显示，奥运会主办国的贸易都出现了极大增长。但是他们的研究也表明，那些申请奥运会失败的国家也是如此，而它们只花了数千万美元，而不是数十亿美元。换句话说，收益源自这些国家发出的信号——它们在商业上的开放——而不是来自于花钱本身。“赢得奥运会主办权的城市认为自己的受益大于申请失败的城市，”史密斯学院(Smith College)的经济学教授安德鲁·津巴利斯特(Andrew Zimbalist)说。“这个想法很可能是错的。”津巴利斯特的新书《大竞技场：举办奥运会和世界杯的经济学》(Circus Maximus: The Economics of Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup)即将出版。
And while Brazil may be eager to signal its economic might, the Games can also tarnish a host country’s reputation. The enduring image of the Munich Olympics is a man in a ski mask; decaying venues from the 2004 Olympics became a metaphor for Greece’s economic crisis. Sochi’s legacy was overshadowed by security concerns and warm weather — even before Russia ended hopes for a tourism boom by annexing Crimea. In a study of the impact of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australian researchers interviewed people in four countries — Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Africa and the United States — one year before and after the Games. They found little change in perceptions, with one surprising wrinkle: South Africans had soured on Australia “because of the way in which the Aboriginal issue was highlighted and portrayed by the South African media,” which drew comparisons with that nation’s history of apartheid.
巴西可能急于彰显自己的经济实力，但是奥运会也可能会玷污主办国的声誉。慕尼黑奥运会给人的长久印象是一个戴着滑雪面罩的男人；2004年奥运会衰败的场馆成为希腊经济危机的暗喻。索契留给后人的遗产被安保考量和温暖的天气蒙上了阴影——甚至在俄罗斯吞并克里米亚、放弃繁荣旅游的希望之前已经如此。澳大利亚研究者为了研究2000年悉尼奥运会的影响，在奥运会举办前一年和举办之后采访了香港、马来西亚、南非和美国四个国家的人。他们发现人们对澳大利亚的看法几乎没有任何改变，只有一个令人吃惊的不同：南非人“因为南非媒体强调和描绘澳大利亚土著问题的方式”——把它与南非种族隔离的历史相比较——而对澳大利亚产生了厌恶情绪。
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