Impact on Local Economies

$6 billion. 2,500 affordable homes. Zero taxpayer money for the stadium. Here's how one Queens project rewrote the playbook: Willets Point is building the affordable housing first. The stadium second. And the numbers tell a different story than every other stadium project: • 2,500 below-market apartments (100% affordable) • First privately-financed stadium in NYC in generations • $6+ billion economic impact over 30 years • 14,000 construction jobs + 1,500 permanent jobs • Stadium opens 2027, housing starts moving in 2026 This isn't just big. It's the largest all-affordable new construction housing project NYC has seen in 40+ years. But here's what makes this different from every other stadium deal: Most stadium projects work like this: • City pays for stadium • Developers build luxury around it • Ordinary families get pushed out • Original community sees zero benefit Willets Point works like this: • Soccer club pays for their own $780 million stadium • 2,500 affordable homes anchor the entire project • 15% of units reserved for formerly homeless New Yorkers • Local residents get hiring priority for 16,000 new jobs The timeline reveals the priorities: Phase 1 starts now: 880 affordable apartments by 2026 Phase 2 follows: Stadium + 1,400 more affordable units by 2027 They're building homes before entertainment. The location makes it work. You've got: • Mets at Citi Field next door • US Open tennis center walking distance • Subway and LIRR station right there • Three major sports venues in one transit hub Most cities build empty stadiums that sit unused 300+ days a year. NYC is building a neighborhood that works every single day. The soccer stadium just happens to be part of it. The real question: Will other cities follow this model? What do you think, is this the future of stadium development?

India now spends ₹2 trillion/year (0.6% of GDP) on cash transfers to 130M+ women—yet we know little about their effects. In a new paper, we present findings from the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial (RCT) of maternal cash transfers in India. The intervention: ₹500/month (~10% of HH consumption) for 2 years to ~1,200 new mothers across 8 Jharkhand districts; given unconditionally, but labeled as support for nutritious food. We tracked food, nutrition, and child development over 3 years. We find that food consumption rose significantly: household food spending up >11%; calorie intake up 9% (Y1) and 14% (Y2) for mothers and children; protein and iron intake also improved. Dietary diversity gains persisted 18 months after the transfers ended. We find substantial improvements in intra-household equity: in Y2, maternal calorie intake rose ~3x more than the household average, helping narrow pre-existing gender gaps in nutrition. Measures of empowerment (e.g., health-seeking behavior for children) also increased. Despite better diets, we do not find average gains in standard anthropometric outcomes (WAZ/HAZ) for targeted children. However, we do find some evidence of gains in areas with better sanitation, consistent with sanitation mediating nutrition-to-growth translation. Older siblings (not directly targeted) saw gains: sibling WAZ scores rose by 0.11–0.13σ, with no heterogeneity by sanitation. Thus, cash transfers benefited other children too, but the mediating role of sanitation in nutrition-to-growth translation may be greater for infants. Child functional development improved. We find a 0.12σ gain in ASQ-3 scores at age 3 — including cognition, and both gross and fine motor skills. These effects may matter even more than physical growth over time as labor markets reward ‘brains’ more than ‘brawn’. Increased food spending from cash transfers to women was at par with in-kind PDS transfers (similar marginal propensity to consume or MPC on food). Thus, cash versus kind debates may be second order when the value of cash transfers is less than what HH are spending on the in-kind item anyway. Overall, we find: a) Positive impacts on food intake, nutrition, and gender equity b) Meaningful gains in child functional development c) Limited average anthropometric gains, mediated by sanitation (highlighting need to pair nutrition efforts with sanitation investments) These positive effects contrast with recent U.S. evidence: Noble et al. (2025) found no developmental gains from large 4-year transfers. Context matters—underscoring the importance of testing in relevant settings. Full paper at: https://bit.ly/4mE6EtW Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar Jeff Weaver UC San Diego J-PAL South Asia

Money, trees, and trust Three Indigenous communities in Peru have spent a year receiving a guaranteed income, and the results are intriguing, reports Sonam Lama Hyolmo. The initiative, among the world’s first directed at Indigenous communities, provides direct cash transfers with no conditions attached. An internal assessment suggests that it is helping to curb destructive forest activities. The 2-year pilot, launched in Nov 2023 by Cool Earth, provides $69/mo to all 188 adults in 3 Indigenous Asháninka & Yánesha communities in Junín, Peru. With these funds, the recipients no longer rely on illegal logging or renting their lands for agriculture. Instead, they have enough for food, medical care & education. “By having less economic stress and food insecurity, the income allows local people, especially women, to lead conservation efforts & have more decision-making capacity,” said ONAMIAP's Ketty Marcelo. Deforestation in the Amazon is often driven by economic necessity, yet conditional conservation payments have had limited success. “Market-based conditional conservation instruments often don’t achieve their goals at all,” argued Bram Büscher, who proposed the idea of a conservation basic income in 2020. The alternative, he says, is to let people decide how to use the money themselves. Whether such an approach works remains uncertain. The latest assessment focused on qualitative impacts rather than forest cover data. An evaluation in 2025, developed with community leaders, will attempt to measure the scheme’s effect on conservation. Not everyone is convinced. Some researchers warn that such schemes may create dependency on cash economies or attract outsiders seeking a free payout. Studies of similar projects elsewhere have found mixed results. In Sierra Leone and Mexico, for instance, deforestation initially rose, as communities used their new income to buy tools for land clearance or migrated to untouched areas. Others note that subsistence is just one driver of deforestation; illegal logging, infrastructure projects & commodity markets all play a role. Despite the uncertainties, the pilot has already reshaped local economies. Women have launched small businesses in weaving & jewelry, and some are reviving traditional agricultural practices. Nurseries have been set up to restore lost plant species, from medicinal huayruro trees to fruit-bearing anonilla. “While it is true that the money is temporary, we try to see it as seed capital that allows us to build initiatives that will help us in the future,” said one Asháninka leader. Beyond this pilot, conservationists continue to debate whether unconditional payments are a viable tool for forest protection. Some argue that the best approach is not cash transfers but ensuring that Indigenous communities have reliable access to education, healthcare & infrastructure, allowing them to manage their forests on their own terms. In Peru, 3 communities are putting this theory to the test.

They bought 135 acres for $88M. And turned it into a $3.5B development. All because they knew what a stadium could really do. Here's the mixed-use play that's transforming San Diego: Most people saw an old stadium. Smart money saw a catalyst. And they were right. Here's how San Diego State turned dead space into the city's biggest bet: This isn't about sports. It's about raising the economic floor. Most people see: • One $310M stadium • 35,000 seats for games • Nice new venue Smart money sees: • Economic gravity center • Rising tide that lifts all boats • Productivity boost per square foot The secret? Think ecosystem. 24/7 activation vs. ghost town model. Traditional stadiums deliver: • Event-day revenue only • Empty parking lots between games • Dead zones 320+ days per year Their multipurpose approach creates: • Year-round programming • Multiple tenant anchors • Constant economic activity No more wasteland between events. Instead, they're stacking revenue streams. They're not building one business. They're building five: • College football (SDSU Aztecs) • Pro soccer (San Diego FC - MLS) • Women's soccer (San Diego Wave) • Major concerts and events • Training facilities and academy Plus the surrounding development: • Housing • Office and retail • Hotels • 80 acres of parks Look at the scale: • $88M land acquisition • $310M stadium investment • $150M training campus • $3.5B total development value That's a 40X multiple on the initial land buy. This heals urban divides. Connects previously disconnected neighborhoods. Creates a self-reinforcing economic ecosystem. The stadium doesn't just generate revenue. It elevates everything around it. When you buy land next to economic gravity centers like this, you're not just buying real estate. You're buying into the rising tide.

Cash transfers changed the sector, but it also shrank our imagination. The ability to deliver money directly quickly, digitally, and with minimal leakage was a radical shift. It cut through layers of bureaucracy. It forced the sector to admit that people could be trusted. And it gave recipients what they’d long been denied: choice. It was a breakthrough in delivery but it was never a blueprint for development. We risk forgetting the difference. We have built an entire architecture around getting money in. We have not asked enough about what’s being built at the other end. Today, the sector celebrates that we can move money at scale. But the measure of progress is not how fast we transfer cash. It’s what people can do with it and whether they ever need it again. Cash 1.0 was logistics. Cash 2.0 was digital dignity. Cash 3.0 must be structural. Cash 3.0 begins with a deeper ambition, not to help people navigate broken systems, but to help them build alternatives to them. 1. Pair cash with public goods. It is not empowerment to ask people to spend their dignity dividend on the basics that should never have been commodified: water, health, education and electricity. When we hand out cash while public systems collapse, we’re outsourcing failure. Cash should not only flow to people. It must fund the systems that sustain them. 2. Pool cash into collective capital. We’ve spent too long treating recipients as isolated units of consumption. But power is collective and so is resilience. Imagine pooled funds governed locally, reinvested into community assets, cooperatives, and group protections. Cash doesn’t just need to circulate. It needs to compound. 3. Let cash buy ownership. Why should the endpoint of cash always be consumption? Why not equity? Why not a stake? What if cash could buy a share in a food hub, a solar grid, a co-owned business? People shouldn’t just survive the economy. They should co-own it. 4. Fix the rails. Right now, we move money through flawed systems: global financial architectures shaped by geopolitics, predatory fees, derisking regimes and broken remittance channels. If the pipes are unreliable, the flow will never be just. We don’t just need cash to move. We need it to move through systems people control. 5. Let cash lead somewhere. Most cash programs are designed to end. But the point isn’t that the money arrives. It’s where it takes you. What if each transfer came embedded with a pathway into IDs, public services, land rights, and livelihoods? 6. Retire RCTs. Build better tools. RCTs were never designed for development. They reduce human complexity to experimental design. They flatten context, reward what’s small, and measure what’s easy, not what matters. Cash 3.0 needs evaluation models that reveal structure, capture agency and track change over time. If all cash does is move resources faster, then it is just a better bandaid. But if we let it, cash can become one of the building blocks of the next economy.

Big Tech loves big numbers. “80,000 jobs created.” “Billions invested.” “Local growth unlocked.” Except most of it isn’t real. Take Microsoft and Google in Chile: both tout huge economic impact from their new data centers. The paperwork tells another story — a few dozen long-term jobs, mostly in security and maintenance. That’s not transformation. That’s housekeeping. This is the part we keep getting wrong. Infrastructure ≠ growth. Buildings don’t create ecosystems. Servers don’t create skills. “Investment” doesn’t automatically mean value retained. We keep mistaking presence for participation. A hyperscale data center sitting in your country isn’t the same as a digital economy taking root. The real multiplier only appears when you design for local leverage — supply chains, education, SME participation, energy integration, exportable know-how. Without that, it’s extractive growth with a green paint job. The value flows out; the PR stays in. If we’re serious about building digital economies, stop counting construction helmets and start tracking capability transfer. How much knowledge stayed? How many new businesses formed? How many locals can now build the next one themselves? Because in the end, “thousands of jobs” is just a line in a press release — and press releases don’t build economies. https://lnkd.in/eWssgUSq #Business #Growth #Strategy #Jobs

The most important sports venue in Minnesota doesn’t host a professional team, but it still generates tens of millions of dollars for the state every year... Let me explain. 👇 This is the National Sports Center. Located less than 20 miles outside of Minneapolis in Blaine, Minnesota, it’s actually not a single stadium but rather a 700-acre youth athletic complex that features almost every playing surface imaginable, including: ∙ 60 soccer fields ∙ 8 sheets of ice ∙ 18-hole golf course ∙ Largest dome in the western hemisphere Still, it’s not the venue’s size that makes it so impressive. Instead, it’s the fact that when funding for it was approved all the way back in 1987, the state of Minnesota only had to contribute a one-time, $14.7 million payment, and even though many residents were skeptical about spending that kind of money on an amateur sports facility at the time, since opening in 1990 it’s estimated that the National Sports Center has generated over $1 billion in economic impact for the state or about $96 million every single year. And that’s not even the best part. Because while the local community benefits from having this massive complex right in their backyard, the real upside lies in tourism spending. For example, in 2024 alone, the National Sports Center calculated that across just 63 events, they were responsible for more than $71 million in direct spending from families who traveled at least 50 miles to attend an event. For context, this is money being spent on local: ∙ Hotels ∙ Restaurants ∙ Transportation ∙ Retail ∙ Recreation And that doesn’t even account for the effect of the spending recirculating into the local economy, which was estimated to be worth over $112 million. Shout out to EventConnect for helping me show the impact of youth sports 🙌 #sportsbusiness #sportsmarketing #youthsports

People who were critical of schemes like Ladki Behna might be wrong all this time. New research from India challenges our understanding of poverty programs. A groundbreaking study provided ₹500 (~10% of household income) monthly to 1,200 new mothers across 8 districts for 2 years. The numbers are striking: 🔷Household food spending jumped 11% 🔷Calorie intake rose 9% (Year 1) and 14% (Year 2) 🔷Mothers' nutrition improved 3x more than the household average 🔷Child development scores increased by 0.12 standard deviations 🔷Older siblings (not targeted) saw weight gains of 0.11-0.13 standard deviations Here's what's remarkable: mothers spent on food at rates comparable to those of government food programs. But unlike vouchers, cash gave them choices. They invested in protein, sought healthcare more often, and gained household decision-making power. The impact extended beyond nutrition. Children typically show better cognitive and motor skills by age three, a development that can shape their future earning potential. India already runs similar programs, reaching over 130 million women, at a cost of 0.6% of GDP. This research yields triple dividends: improved nutrition, gender equity, and enhanced child development. Context matters. While similar cash programs have shown limited impact in the US, they work differently in areas where basic needs aren't met. The lesson? Sometimes, trusting people with cash delivers more than we imagine.

The debate around Milan’s new stadium is often emotional. The numbers tell a much clearer story. TEHA Group analysed the socio-economic impact of the new San Siro project. Here’s what comes out. ✅ During construction (10 years) - €4.6bn cumulative economic impact - 18,450 jobs created (direct, indirect, induced) ✅ Once fully operational (steady state) - €3.1bn per year of economic impact - 16,350 jobs per year supported - 365 days a year of activity, not just matchdays -> +5.5 million additional tourists, visitors, and users every year More than a stadium it's a permanent attraction hub. ✅ Compared to today’s San Siro -> +80% GDP generated - Higher economic concentration at neighbourhood level - Strong impact on Milan, but with spillovers across the entire country through national supply chains ✅ Urban impact - Regeneration of 280,000 sqm of urban void (around 7 times Piazza Duomo) - Public green areas tripled - New public services, spaces, and collective functions ✅ Strategic value - Ability to host major sports and cultural events - Eligibility for EURO 2032 - Future Champions League finals - Highly magnetic events ☑️ The bigger picture This is a private-capital project using sport as a lever for: - urban regeneration - economic growth - job creation - international competitiveness Not just for Milan. For Italy. And one final question worth asking: If London can have 7 Premier League clubs, almost all with their own stadiums… can Milan really not have one modern stadium, shared by two clubs? From a football business point of view, the answer seems obvious. More in the newsletter. Link in Bio 👆