Do local expenditures on sports facilities affect sports participation?

This paper contributes to the literature evaluating the performance of local governments by analyzing the effect of local public expenditures on sports facilities on sports participation in Germany. To this end, we use a new data base containing public expenditures at the municipality level and link this information with individual level data. We form locally weighted averages of expenditures based on geographic distances and analyze how effects of sports facility expenditures change with different expenditures levels (“dose-response relationship”). We find no effect of sports facility expenditures on individual sports participation. These findings are robust across age groups and municipality sizes.