Trading Effects of FIFA World Cup

This study analyzes the trading effects of FIFA World Cup in two dimensions. First, focusing on the host countries' trade and estimating both static OLS and dynamic panel estimations, we show that participating in the World Cup significantly increases exports from the participant countries to the host countries, relative to a control group of non-participants. We also obtain the same pattern for the exports originating from the host countries to the articipants. Second, we demonstrate that trade is reasonably higher for host-participant pairs compared to other country pairs both in the years of the World Cup and permanently over the sample of our data. We offer a number of plausible arguments and important channels for our findings.