"The social season is upon us once more, dear readers, and with it comes the promise of courtships, grand balls, and, of course, scandal. But none so great as this: a most respectable family, revered by all, is hiding a disgraceful secret. What is it, you ask? Patience, my darlings. All will be revealed in due course. For now, let the guessing games begin.” Lady Whistledown.
The Bridgerton television series has won many an eye, ear, angst, and heart. I to, dear readers, have come to fall under its spell. In fact, there is to my mind nothing more exhilarating on modern television than the drama that unfolds in “the Ton”, that mythical place where the wealthy live without consequence and awareness of the other sections of society. They dance away their cares. They visit brothels. They promenade. And all that’s left to shake up their very existence… No, all that spices up their very life is gossip. Who will wed? No, who stole money? No, who is shameful?
Lady Whistledown, a primary character from the series, thrives on this yearning for variety. Her weekly gossip rags, all published strategically throughout “the season” are quite influential. They are such in that they even influenced public policy in the most recent of episodes. That in and of itself seems rather ridiculous, for the effort, one time, of the Queen of England to unmask a rumormonger resulted in considerable fiscal waste. Quelle damage!
I came up with an interesting way to modernise a very old theory due to this behaviour. That is the very misallocation of fiscal resources, or those in general, as a result of being fed frivolous information. For your sake, dear reader, I won’t send you scampering to an academic “bochard” just to find what we should term the “Whistledown Effect”. For now! You, dear reader, are more tantalized by an economist’s take on the public sector. Moreso than anything else. For that, I will spend my time in this respect.
Glorious! We witness the Whistledown Effect every single time our political leaders use various platforms to “misdirect”. I heed caution here because I, unlike them, do not enjoy parliamentary privileges. And even so, it does not take much to convince some to dispose of it in an effort to use the effect to their gain. Take the now infamous hot take on the previous government presiding over a “glorious” decade despite all manner of data suggesting otherwise. Now, imagine that there’s also a growing section of our population that may agree. To that end, with the damage wrought by the Covid 19 pandemic, it would make sense that many feel as though it is indeed worse than it used to be economically and socially. This is the Whistledown Effect at genesis.
Barbados’ GDP is still much smaller than it was in 2008. The economy has stabilised only as long as you believe that this has meant better for the underprivileged. In fact, the Whistledown Effect was in play since 2002 when, data by our Central Bank, and, moreover, international agencies had long suggested that tourism arrivals were a distraction - at best. Tell me why then, dear reader, that every push to grow our tourism product, is led always by arrivals and not by some idea on spend per arrival? This is the Whistledown Effect on display.
Both compliment and complement the other quite well, even though data on spend is said to be difficult to collect. I argue differently, as you the reader well know that there are several ways to mine this data using simple algorithms. The technology is there to make robust estimates on spend. Sadly, the emphasis on the arrivals resulting in the Cayman Airways debacle and, in my sole opinion, along with the challenges with the ICC T20 World Cup with respect to Barbados.
There is too much evidence that points towards World Cups or large-but-infrequent spectacle tourneys like the Olympics leaving developing nations in even more debt than they had before hosting. Actually, this sort of applies to developed nations as well. The University of Oxford has a famous blog post, published in 2020, that shows that every Olympics since 1960 had cost overruns, especially if infrastructure needed for the games was not in place before preparations commenced.
I understand, dear reader, that infrastructural development, or even fiscal expenditure-led development is imperative for a small open economy like Barbados; given that it is not uncontrollably debt led. I, alike you, am grateful for the new roads. I get the link to a future payoff of, again, a growth in tourist arrivals. But the risk, which we already took, in 2007 is definitely not going to be worth the reward since the Whistledown Effect was used to encourage us to expect massive spend by tourists. There have been bright spots, but the risk of India not advancing far into the tournament meant that many hoteliers were biting their nails well into the middle of June. Other businesses as well. This is the Whistledown Effect in maturation.
There is also research which suggests that a jump in tourism arrivals for such tourneys is not to be banked on. Ironically, there is way more support for more frequent but smaller tournaments or festivals. Those are the unsung stars of sports tourism; making governments commit smaller bits of regular investment while catering to repeat visitors who are more committed to the sport and the spend on that love. I could be wrong if we plan to have cricket matches with or against India every year. Otherwise, events to this scale are pointless as they are perpetrated to raise our hopes against all real evidence. It’s just like how Lady Whistledown would play the entire Ton. Only the USA stands to benefit with its sizable Indian diaspora. Mark my words, dear reader, that they will capitalise in a way that we cannot.
Dear reader, I can even predict for you that some other lady whistledowns are readying their stencils in an effort to justify in the aftermath of this tourney. They will eschew using real data on spend as it takes a while to collect. They will make their call on arrivals. They have fancy models that do that really, really well. We will hear that the economy grew due to the tourney despite evidence on the street and through traditional media that may say otherwise. We will hear that the economy expanded because of government’s investment in our road network. This will be true to an extent but the degree of growth will seem trivial. It looks like nothing much has or will change. You will question it; mumble so to your closest associates. But as you read on, you will feel as though they are saying to you, “Patience, my darlings. All will be revealed in due course. For now, let the guessing games begin”.