足球只是一场游戏吗?——基于断点回归设计研究世界杯对国际贸易的影响

Is FIFA World Cup Just a Game?Empirical Evidence of Trade Effect from a Regression Discontinuity Design

本文利用足球世界杯的晋级规则造成的排名断点,采取断点回归设计这一识别方法,结合传统引力模型,使用1950-2014年的184个国家(地区)(1)的双边贸易数据和世界杯预选赛赛区排名数据,考察了晋级世界杯决赛对参赛国国际贸易的影响。我们发现,晋级决赛使得参赛国当年的进口额上升了7.8%。当年及之后3年的进口额平均上升了10.5%。本文较好地解决了传统OLS估计方法存在的内生性问题,从国际贸易的视角分析了参加世界杯的经济效益,为我国备战足球世界杯以及支持足球事业发展提供了新的经验依据。

This paper identifies the causal relationship between being qualified in FIFA World Cup and international trade increase with bilateral trade data among 184 countries and regions and FIFA zone-ranking data of preliminaries. Based on the qualification rules,we employed the regression discontinuity design( RDD) method on traditional gravity model. The empirical results show that being qualified in FIFA World Cup increases the qualifiers ’ import around 7. 8%temporarily and 10. 5% in the following 3 years on average. Traditional OLS methods underestimates these effects because of endogeneity problem.Our results firstly analyze the benefit on international trade of participating in the World Cup,providing new empirical evidence and support for China’s investment of the World Cup and development of Chinese football.