How many of you were a bit skeptical at U.K. government claims that up to a million additional visitors, over and above normal tourist numbers, would be crowding in to London for the 2012 Olympics?

So beloved of the modern politician isn’t it, the unsubstantiated soundbite delivered for populist effect, bereft of any robust analysis or factual back-up. Anecdotal evidence suggests aggregate visitor numbers are down, as foreign visitors not wishing to get caught up in the U.K.’s supposedly creaking transport infrastructure choose to stay away.

This is actually a non-story. Economists are keener to know what the impact of staging the Olympics will be on the U.K. economy , but this is a difficult analysis to conduct because, just as with quantitative easing , it is not straightforward to determine what the results would have been if the activity under review had not taken place.

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