Arlington Stadium Update Greg Depkin,

Arlington Stadium Update

Greg Depkin, at Heavy Lifting has provided a helpful set of links to his posts on the Arlington stadium referendum: "Collected Stadium Posts".

Arlington, Texas, has a referendum November 2 on whether or not to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to finance a stadium in an effort to attract the Dallas Cowboys. This is likely to be a good deal for the Cowboys, but not for Arlington. The Cowboys are working hard to promote it. Depkin reports that:

"UT-Arlington is one of the few places in Tarrant County at which early voting is taking place. Evidently during the lunch hour today, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were on campus to drum up support for the stadium initiative. Let's see. Scantily clad gorgeous women and nineteen year old males. I am sure the cheerleaders had no impact on anybody's vote.

The other day the Cheerleaders visited the UAW Local at the GM plant here in Arlington. During last nights Red Sox-Yankees game Coach Parcells was on a commercial warning the citizens of Arlington "not to fumble the ball, and vote yes." Overall, some pretty impressive spokespeople, and if that is all it takes, then the stadium initiative will pass."

Depkin, an economist at the University of Texas, Arlington, has provided continuous updates on the negotiations, news coverage, and debates, since the story began to break in July. He has been particularly good in his evaluations of the economic analyses of the proposal, and in describing the way they've been used in the political debates. There have been almost 40 posts since the end of July. Links are provided to the original versions of key economic analyses.

I'm teaching economics of public policy to public administration master's students this semester. I'm going to have them read "The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities" by John Siegfried and Andrew Zimbalist (JEP 14(3): 95-114. Summer, 2000) and then follow that up with a selection of Greg's posts and of the economic studies he cites. I think it will be a good opportunity to highlight the issues involved, as well as the ways in which economic analysis is used and misused in public debate.

I learned about Depkin's link collection from Skip Sauer at Sports Economist. The Sports Economist is another useful source for information on stadium economic studies and debates. "Dueling Studies on Arlington stadium" covers addresses the Cowboy stadium debate. "Caught Stealing" links to a Cato briefing paper on proposed subsidies for a D.C. baseball stadium.