IMF: World cup and productivity

This article is brought to you in association with IMFBlog on the occasion of Russia World Cup Written by IMFBlog The World Cup and productivity.  Two of our favorite topics, together in one chart.   How much your productivity—the amount you produce per hour of work—takes a hit during the World Cup depends on where you live. The chart, put together by Statista, shows that your distance from the games as measured by time zones determines the potential effect on your productivity at work. “While bosses in large parts of Asia and Australia can relax because of the games starting at night, Brazilian employers should probably cut their workers some slack over the next few weeks: because of the time difference more than 60 hours of World Cup action will be played during regular working hours in Rio,” writes Felix Richter, a London-based data journalist who crunched the numbers. Productivity in the broader sense—how much value an average hour of work adds to the economy—is a topic we at the IMF spend a lot of time thinking about.  We have tons of data and analysis about what has happened to productivity in recent years, particularly since the global crisis.