II cast my first vote at age 18 in 1997, voting "yes" on a proposal to spend government money on a stadium for Major League Soccer's Columbus Crew. I did not know it then, but economists were in pretty much universal agreement that stadiums are poor public "investments." That consensus has only strengthened over time, as demonstrated in The Economic Impact of Sports Facilities, Franchises, and Events. The book contains 16 essays in honor of stadium economics pioneer Robert Baade of Lake Forest College. Economists argue a lot, but as John Charles Bradbury puts it in his contribution, "There are few topics on which there is more agreement among economists than the economic impact of sports stadiums." The science is settled, to coin a phrase: even when economists do find evidence that stadiums, franchises, and mega- events generate local tax revenue, create jobs, or make cities better places to live, the effects are much, much smaller than what boosters claim based on sophisticated sounding but fundamentally flawed economic impact studies. Bradbury explains the "Baade Rule": "If you want to know what the true economic impact of an event is, take whatever number is being claimed by the boosters and move the decimal point one place to the left."
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