Una stima realistica dell’impatto economico dei visitatori dell’Expo 2015[The economic impact of Expo 2015 visitors: a realistic estimate]

Many economic impact assessments of major events overestimate the benefits of such events because they do not consider the substitution effects. In reality, a more careful evaluation should consider only the spending that is additional to the area of investigation. In this paper, we focus on a recent event, Expo 2015, and consider a single impact item, the impact of visitors. We propose, in coherence with some methodological proposals made in various countries, to use a survey to distinguish the additional component of the visitors’ expenditure from the substitutive one. This allows to better measure the economic impact of Expo on Italy. The data show that almost all of the Italian visits substitute other presences in Italy, while just 50% of visits for foreigners are additional. Moreover, the number of visits of foreigners appears lower than forecasted. Putting together these elements, the additional expenditure generated by the Expo can be estimated up to 1 billion, or a little more in more optimistic estimates, likely to activate 1.3 billion euro of VA (2 billion in a more speculative case) to be compared to 4 or 4.3 billion estimated ex ante. This benefit, with that resulting from other impacts, should be compared with the cost of the event.