Our main contribution is to study a variable, international soccer results, that has particu- larly attractive properties as a measure of mood. While extensive psychological evidence, which we review below, shows that sports in general have a significant effect on mood, TV viewing figures, media coverage, and merchandise sales suggest that soccer in particular is of “national interest” in many of the countries we study. 1 It is hard to imagine other regular events that produce such substantial and correlated mood swings in a large proportion of a country’s pop- ulation. These characteristics provide strong a priori motivation for using game outcomes to capture mood changes among investors
