IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc21/242460.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Davos More Than a Boondoggle?

Author

Listed:
  • Schmidt, Sebastian
  • Rose, Andrew K.
  • Fuchs, Andreas

Abstract

Each year since 1971, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, has attracted the leadership of global corporations, governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as other public figures. However, attending the Davos summit is costly for companies with estimated costs of US$ 40,000 per delegate. On the one hand, WEF attendance could generate a value added for companies if it generates a business network and buys valuable political support. On the other hand, it could be wasteful in the sense that it generates only private benefits to the attendees themselves without measurable effects for their companies. Our paper is the first to study whether companies draw economic benefits from attending Davos. We introduce a novel database on WEF attendees over the 2009 - 2018 period and match it with firm-level data on stock market performance and corporate ratings. We then use fixed-effects estimations and-in a future version of this paper-a synthetic control method to test whether companies present at Davos perform better. Our donor pool of counterfactual companies consists of MSCI-ACWI corporations from the same sector. Our preliminary findings do not provide evidence that the most famous summit of global leaders creates direct value to businesses.

Suggested Citation

  • Schmidt, Sebastian & Rose, Andrew K. & Fuchs, Andreas, 2021. "Is Davos More Than a Boondoggle?," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242460, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc21:242460
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/242460/1/vfs-2021-pid-50636.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dreher, Axel & Voigt, Stefan, 2011. "Does membership in international organizations increase governments' credibility? Testing the effects of delegating powers," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 326-348, September.
    2. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    3. Xu, Yiqing, 2017. "Generalized Synthetic Control Method: Causal Inference with Interactive Fixed Effects Models," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 57-76, January.
    4. Moser, Christoph & Rose, Andrew K., 2014. "Who benefits from regional trade agreements? The view from the stock market," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 31-47.
    5. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Kermani, Amir & Kwak, James & Mitton, Todd, 2016. "The value of connections in turbulent times: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 368-391.
    6. Andrew Rose, 2005. "Which International Institutions Promote International Trade?," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(4), pages 682-698, September.
    7. Davies, Ronald B. & Studnicka, Zuzanna, 2018. "The heterogeneous impact of Brexit: Early indications from the FTSE," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-17.
    8. Dreher, Axel & Mikosch, Heiner & Voigt, Stefan, 2015. "Membership has its Privileges – The Effect of Membership in International Organizations on FDI," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 346-358.
    9. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    10. Andrew K. Rose, 2004. "Do We Really Know That the WTO Increases Trade?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 98-114, March.
    11. Egger, Peter & Larch, Mario, 2011. "An assessment of the Europe agreements' effects on bilateral trade, GDP, and welfare," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 263-279, February.
    12. Tim Büthe & Helen V. Milner, 2008. "The Politics of Foreign Direct Investment into Developing Countries: Increasing FDI through International Trade Agreements?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 741-762, October.
    13. Selwyn J. V. Moons & Peter A. G. Bergeijk, 2017. "Does Economic Diplomacy Work? A Meta-analysis of Its Impact on Trade and Investment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 336-368, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pekka Malo & Juha Eskelinen & Xun Zhou & Timo Kuosmanen, 2024. "Computing Synthetic Controls Using Bilevel Optimization," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 64(2), pages 1113-1136, August.
    2. Tomasz Serwach, 2023. "The European Union and within‐country income inequalities. The case of the new member states," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(7), pages 1890-1939, July.
    3. Kuosmanen, Timo & Zhou, Xun & Eskelinen, Juha & Malo, Pekka, 2021. "Design Flaw of the Synthetic Control Method," MPRA Paper 106328, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Tomasz Serwach, 2022. "The European Union and within-country income inequalities. The case of the New Member States," Working Papers hal-03548416, HAL.
    5. Dreher, Axel & Mikosch, Heiner & Voigt, Stefan, 2015. "Membership has its Privileges – The Effect of Membership in International Organizations on FDI," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 346-358.
    6. Giulio Grossi & Marco Mariani & Alessandra Mattei & Patrizia Lattarulo & Ozge Oner, 2020. "Direct and spillover effects of a new tramway line on the commercial vitality of peripheral streets. A synthetic-control approach," Papers 2004.05027, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    7. David Gilchrist & Thomas Emery & Nuno Garoupa & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Synthetic Control Method: A tool for comparative case studies in economic history," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 409-445, April.
    8. Wanling Rudkin & Charlie X Cai, 2019. "Reaction Asymmetries to Social Responsibility Index Recomposition: A Matching Portfolio Approach," Papers 1911.12582, arXiv.org.
    9. Antonis Adam & Sofia Tsarsitalidou, 2024. "Be my guest: the effect of foreign policy visits to the USA on FDI," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 160(2), pages 455-480, May.
    10. Daniel Albalate & Germà Bel & Ferran A. Mazaira-Font, 2021. "Decoupling synthetic control methods to ensure stability, accuracy and meaningfulness," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 549-584, December.
    11. Klößner, Stefan & Pfeifer, Gregor, 2015. "Synthesizing Cash for Clunkers: Stabilizing the Car Market, Hurting the Environment," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113207, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    12. Matej Opatrny, 2021. "The impact of the Brexit vote on UK financial markets: a synthetic control method approach," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 559-587, May.
    13. Yiping Lu & Jiajin Li & Lexing Ying & Jose Blanchet, 2022. "Synthetic Principal Component Design: Fast Covariate Balancing with Synthetic Controls," Papers 2211.15241, arXiv.org.
    14. Rudkin, Wanling & Cai, Charlie X., 2023. "Information content of sustainability index recomposition: A synthetic portfolio approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    15. Berger, Elizabeth A. & Butler, Alexander W. & Hu, Edwin & Zekhnini, Morad, 2021. "Financial integration and credit democratization: Linking banking deregulation to economic growth," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    16. Ryo Makioka, 2021. "The impact of anti‐sweatshop activism on employment," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 630-653, May.
    17. Samuel Verevis & Murat Üngör, 2021. "What has New Zealand gained from The FTA with China?: Two counterfactual analyses†," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(1), pages 20-50, February.
    18. Echevarría, Cruz A. & Hasancebi, Serhat & García-Enríquez, Javier, 2022. "Economic Effects of Macao’s Integration with Mainland China: A Causal Inference Study," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 37(2), pages 179-215.
    19. Bruno Ferman & Cristine Pinto & Vitor Possebom, 2020. "Cherry Picking with Synthetic Controls," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 510-532, March.
    20. Mustapha Douch & Terence Huw Edwards, 2022. "The bilateral trade effects of announcement shocks: Brexit as a natural field experiment," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 305-329, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    World Economic Forum; international organizations; business leaders; stockmarkets; corporate ratings; summits;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F53 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G39 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Other
    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc21:242460. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.