Abstract

Soccer has become an important economic sector. Its place inside our societies has grown continously over the last decades. This paper contributes to the nascent literature in economics looking at the externalities associated with soccer. We have a specific focus on the linkages between soccer and the intensity, diversity and spatial distribution of crimes. Using a unique partially geolocalised dataset on hourly criminality in Ecuador, we analyze the effect of the ecuadorian Serie A soccer championship on the spatio-temporal distribution of crime over the 2010-2015 period. We combine soccer results with data from the betting market to infer emotional indices based on the differences between the expected and actual matches’ results. We show that there is a 10% increase in robberies just after the matches, near to the stadium but also in other urban areas. Crimes against individuals also increase just after matches, near to the stadium and inside the unban core. These effects are amplified according to the emotional intensity related to matches results. This phenoma is particularly strong in the capital city Quito which hosts several rival teams, with several derbies and where rival fans are close to each other.

Keywords: crime, emotions, police displacement, soccer, self-incapacitation.
JEL classification: L83, K42, R1.
Co-authors : Andrea Aguirre-Sanchez and Stéphane Riou

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