The impact of Taylor Swift on the Kansas City Chiefs' TV ratings

In 2023, Taylor Swift began a relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. After that, Kansas City Chiefs broadcasts seemed increasingly eager to cut to shots of Taylor Swift in the corporate boxes, rather than fans in the stands. The NFL was clearly trying to appeal to Swift's fans, but did it work? In a new article published in the Journal of Sports Economics (sorry, I don't see an ungated version online), Kerianne Rubenstein (Syracuse University) and Frank Stephenson (Berry College) show that it did.

Rubenstein and Stephenson collated data on 247 NFL games played in the 2022 and 2023 seasons, noting that the first Chiefs game that Taylor Swift attended was in the third week of the 2023 season. They apply a difference-in-differences analysis, comparing the difference in TV ratings between before and after Week 3 of 2023 for the Chiefs, with before and after Week 3 of 2023 for other teams, while controlling for other variables expected to affect TV ratings. In other words, Rubenstein and Stephenson check whether the Chiefs' TV ratings increased by more than the average before-and-after change that other teams experienced. They find that:

...Chiefs’ games after Taylor Swift started attending see an increase of 2.15 ratings points, which is an approximately 32% increase relative to the mean Nielsen rating... total viewership increased by about 4.8 million after Taylor Swift started attending Chiefs’ games.

So, it appears that Taylor Swift did increase TV ratings for the Kansas City Chiefs. Good news for the Chiefs (and for other NFL teams, who share in the broadcast revenue). Interestingly, and to be expected given Swift's young fan base, the effect was even larger on TV viewership among those aged 18-34 years, with a 40.1 percent increase in TV rating.

An important question, though, is whether Swift attracted new fans, and whether they stuck around. In terms of the former, Rubenstein and Stephenson find some evidence that games played at the same time as Chiefs games suffered a decrease in TV ratings (although that analysis is based on a sample of only ten games, which limits how much we can take from it). However, they also find an increase in TV ratings when the Chiefs game was the only game in its timeslot. So, while there was some substitution between NFL games, new fans were also attracted to watch. And, they did stick around - Rubenstein and Stephenson find limited evidence that the effect declined over time, with Chiefs games later in 2023 having a similar TV rating as those earlier in the season (it is worth noting that the Chiefs had a particularly good 2023 season though, finishing the regular season 11-6, winning their division, and ultimately winning Super Bowl LVIII).

Celebrities are a common feature of sports games. Rubenstein and Stephenson note the example of the Atlanta Hawks, who make courtside seats available to celebrities with large social media followings in the hopes of increasing game attendance and TV ratings. Not every celebrity has the profile of Taylor Swift. However, the results in this study suggest that the Hawks' strategy might be a sensible strategy for increasing the profile of games. The NFL should take notice. Certainly, this would make much more sense than, as some conspiracy theorists would have you believe, biasing the officiating in favour of particular teams (like the Chiefs). So, leaving conspiracies aside, what we learn from this paper is that celebrity appearances at games can increase demand. That seems to be exactly what happened here, with Taylor Swift’s presence helping to increase the audience for Kansas City Chiefs games.

This week in research #118

Here's what caught my eye in research over the past week (a quiet week, following last week's bumper edition):

• Rubenstein and Stephenson assess the effect of Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce on the Kansas City Chiefs’ television audience, and find that viewership increases by about one-third beginning with Swift’s first time attending a Chiefs’ game
• Bussoli and Fattobene (open access) find that Financial Graph Literacy is lower among older adults, those with less education, and lower-income groups, and is significantly associated with a greater likelihood of engaging in proactive financial behaviours such as saving, investing, budgeting, and using digital financial tools

How the 'travelling Pope' affected international trade

Pope John Paul II was known as 'the travelling Pope' because of the large number of international trips ('pastoral visits') he undertook (more than 100 during his reign from 1979 to 2004). He also had a huge following, as you might expect as the leader of the Catholic Church, but the advent of television meant that the public could follow his travels in a much closer way than ever before. And, through his pastoral visits and his following, he exposed Catholics the world over to new places they would otherwise not have seen or, in some cases, even heard of. What effects did that exposure have?

That is essentially the question addressed in this recent article by Alexander Popov (European Central Bank), published in the Economic Journal (ungated earlier version here). Popov focuses on the impact of the Pope's visits on exports from the visited country, and especially exports to Catholic countries. He employs an event study design - looking at how exports changed between the time before and the time after the Pope's first visit to a country, while controlling for GDP growth, population, the US dollar real exchange rate, and the extent of trade liberalisation and democracy. The key results are summarised in Figure 2(a) from the paper:

The figure shows how exports evolve before and after the Pope's visit. Beforehand, there isn't much evidence of a trend (notice that the red line hovers around zero). However, after the Pope's visit, exports increase (the red line is clearly above zero and trending upwards), and the effect is substantial. Popov notes that:

...the point estimate on Year 3 after the pope’s visit to a country is 0.1152, which implies that exports to the rest of the world are higher by 12.2%, relative to the year of the visit.

And the effects are even larger for exports to countries with larger Catholic populations. Specifically:

...exports to a trading partner with 54.3% (75th percentile), relative to a trading partner with 1.1% (25th percentile) Catholics in the population were higher by between 16.5% and 36.9% during years 1 to 5 after a visit by the pope.

Clearly, Catholics were paying attention to where the Pope was visiting. Popov then asks the obvious question: what explains this effect? He examines three hypotheses:

The first one is that during a foreign visit, the pope explicitly encourages Catholics around the world to engage with the host country on economic terms. I analyse 633 speeches given during the pope’s 130 first visits and I find rare occasions when he mentions words like ‘trade’, ‘economic’ or ‘globalisation’.

So, the Pope wasn't explicitly telling Catholics to buy more goods from the countries he was visiting. Then:

The second hypothesis is that, by simply visiting a country, the pope raises its profile, or ‘puts it on the map’ for the global Catholic family, especially if Catholics around the world are for cultural or economic reasons less connected with the visited country. I find that the effect on exports of a pastoral visit to a country is stronger if this country is relatively poor and if it has relatively fewer Catholics and relatively weaker bilateral trade links with the partner country. The third hypothesis is that Catholics around the world are simply buying souvenirs to commemorate the pope’s visit. I analyse data on bilateral trade at the product level, for ten different sectors, and I find that after a pastoral visit, the increase in exports I detect takes place in half of them.

So, the third hypothesis (souvenirs) doesn't have much support. Popov concludes that the second hypothesis shows the likely driver of the increase in exports. This evidence is consistent with the Pope raising the profile of the countries he visited, and those countries benefiting from their higher profile among Catholics in the form of higher exports, especially to Catholic countries.

What makes this paper interesting in an economic sense is that it suggests trade flows don't just depend on prices, trade policy, and distance. They also depend on visibility, familiarity, and the ways that cultural influence can affect economic outcomes. Pope John Paul II's visits appear to have increased visibility and familiarity, which may in turn have boosted trade. The 'travelling Pope' may have also been the 'trade-promoting Pope'.

Seven decades of change in the demographics and research styles of top economics research

Back in 2013, Daniel Hamermesh (University of Texas at Austin) published this article in the Journal of Economic Literature (ungated earlier version here), which summarised changes in the demographics and research styles of top economics research, based on articles published between 1963 and 2011 in three top journals: the American Economic Review (AER), the Journal of Political Economy (JPE), and the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE). A new update last year (open access) from Hamermesh extends the analysis to include articles up to 2024.

In terms of demographics, the trends show a continuation and in terms of gender, Hamermesh notes that:

The progression that occurred from the 1960s and 1970s, when only a minute fraction of authors were women, to the early twenty-first century has, if anything, accelerated.

This will be welcome news, given the persistent gender gap in economics (see this post and the links at the end of it). It likely reflects the changing demographics of young economists, with a growing proportion of the young 'stars' in economics being women (and noting that it is young stars who often get published in the top journals that Hamermesh is considering).

In terms of the age structure of authors, Hamermesh reports that:

The changes from 2011 to 2024 continued those that started in the 1980s, but the rate of change has not accelerated. Indeed, most noticeable from 2011 to 2024 was a continuing sharp and statistically significant drop in the representation of the youngest group (and a nearly equal sharp rise among those 36–50)...

...the average age of authorship has increased steadily since 1973. 

Can I change my comment above about the young stars in economics? The increasing median age of authors in top journals seems to be a general trend across academia. Hamermesh then turns to research 'style', documenting a continued dramatic rise in the proportion of articles in those journals that are co-authored:

There were no four-authored papers as recently as 1983; today they account for 17 percent of articles. There were no papers with more than four authors in 2003; today nearly 12 percent of articles have five or more authors (with five articles written by six authors each and one by seven authors). Obversely, sole-authored papers are now quite scarce; and even two-authored papers today only account for slightly more than one-fourth of all articles (compared to a majority as recently as 2003).

Unsurprisingly, the increase in the number of co-authored articles means that the age diversity of author collaborations has increased over time as well. In terms of the types of research, he reports that:

The big changes are the continuing rise in empirical work based on original non-laboratory data and the rapid and even accelerating increase in experimental work. Today these two methods, which both involve collecting original data, account for over half of all published papers, compared to less than 4 percent four decades ago...

These trends are not all unrelated, of course. Experimental research, and the increasing use of large datasets, typically both require larger research teams. They also often require more detailed methods, which may involve both larger teams, and more experienced researchers. Larger teams might be more likely to include female team members. And larger teams often need someone to lead and coordinate all of the team members, and those leaders tend to be more experienced (and older) academics. So, it would not surprise me, if more detailed analysis was conducted, to see that the trends are interconnected.

Now, the interesting thing will be what happens going forward, given the increasing use of generative AI in research (see here, for example). Since generative AI can now do a lot of the work that research assistants and early career researchers previously did, will the trend towards larger research teams be reversed? How will that interact with the gender gap in research (given that the age of female economists skews younger at the moment). And how will it affect the age distribution of researchers (given that men, and younger people, are somewhat more likely to use generative AI). I'll be looking forward to Hamermesh's next update. Hopefully, we don't have to wait another 12 years.

[HT: Marginal Revolution, last year]