Towards Improved Guidelines for Cost–Benefit Analysis of Sport and Cultural Events*

Abstract

Consistent evaluation procedures would be necessary to assess correctly the impacts of sport and cultural events, in particular large events. This paper reviews methodological issues in CBA of sport and cultural events based on what appears as the first attempt to provide guidelines for such analysis: the Framework used by New South Wales Treasury. This framework actually deals with most of the questions that an analyst would have to consider on this issue. Based on this document, we propose various possible amendments, which mostly relate to a fuller consideration of opportunity costs, displacement and other General Equilibrium effects. Many of the methodological issues investigated may have an important impact on the analysis results.