Government Subsidies for the New Yankee Stadium:  Tonight's
major league all star game may be the last major contest held at
Yankee Stadium, a great sports icon that will be replaced by a
newly constructed stadium of the same name beginning next
season. Unfortunately, the new Yankee stadium was partly
financed with at least $200 million in state and city government
subsidies, and possibly as much as $450 million. In addition,
the city has also provided the Yankees with $941 million in tax-
exempt bonds, and the team is lobbying for an additional $350
million. Although the Yankees will have to pay the bond money
back, it still constitutes an additional public subsidy because
the money is tax-exempt and presumably comes at a lower interest
rate than the Yankees would have to pay if they borrowed the
same amount from private lenders.  In this 2006 post, I
criticized these public subsidies for the new Yankee Stadium, as
well as sports stadium subsidies in general. Studies by
economists almost uniformly show that s