'Economic Benefits of Hosting Olympics Are Few'

From the Wall Street Journal:

There are actually lots of reasons not to play host. The most apparent one is that the positive economic effects tend to be negligible — if they even exist.

…Athens said hosting the games there would cost $1.6 billion. It ended up being about $16 billion. Beijing predicted $1.6 billion but current estimates say that’s more like $30 to $40 billion. And the 2012 games in London, originally expected to cost less than $5 billion, may now come with a price tag of around $19 million, Zimbalist noted in a paper he co-wrote with the University of Alberta’s Brad R. Humphreys.

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