Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Economic impact of the Cardinals' playoff run

There's an interesting post by Kelsey Volkmann on the St. Louis Business Journal site that discusses two very different estimates of the per-game impact of Cardinals' playoff games.
Both estimates are probably too high but the one by the Regional Chamber and Growth Association is simply laughable because it double counts:  It counts revenue spent at restaurants as an impact, but then also counts things like the additional wages paid to workers at the restaurants as a separate impact.  The wages are part of the distribution of the impact, not a separate impact.  This is how the multiplier effect works: take the actual effect of something, imagine a miraculous multiplication, and presto!