Long live Fenerbahçe: the production boosting effects of football

Abstract

The connection between Turkish industrial production performance and the success of a popular Turkish football team, namelyFenerbahc¸e, is the central theme of this article. The success of Fenerbahc¸e is interpreted as a proxyfor the workers mood or morale. Performing a transfer function analysis on our monthly data set, we reveal positive feedback from Fenerbahc¸e s success, which proxies workers mood/morale, to economic performance such that the monthlyindustrial growth rate increases by0.26% with the number of games won byFenerbahc¸e in European cups regardless of where the game is played. Evidence of the effects of games against domestic rivals on industrial performance is not statistically significant. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.