The Estimation of Consumer Surplus Benefits from a City Owned Multipurpose Coliseum Complex

Abstract: Coliseums can create consumer surplus benefits by providing types of entertainment to local residents that would otherwise not be available to them. This paper estimates consumer surplus for a major city owned entertainment/convention facility, the Greensboro Coliseum Complex (GCC). A novel aspect of this paper is that it estimates the distribution of consumer surplus across households of different income levels, as well as aggregate consumer surplus. It is estimated that aggregate consumer surplus from the GCC in 1999 exceeded the public subsidy for this complex, but a disproportionate amount of the consumer surplus benefits go to higher income households.