Atlantic International Partnership Headlines:Money literally could not buy this kind of publicity for Brand Britain

http://altlanticinternationalpartnership.net/2011/05/atlantic-international-partnership-headlinesmoney-literally-could-not-buy-this-kind-of-publicity-for-brand-britain/

What does the UK economy get out of the Royal wedding? That might seem a rather nerdy question to pose, just the sort of question that justifies economics’ soubriquet of “the dismal science”.
Any tally of the additional money spent by visitors, setting that off against the loss of output because of the extra bank holiday, does have a dismal ring to it. But what lifts the whole matter to a different level is the value and role of a brand. On its ability to attract a global television audience, the British Royal family would appear to be the greatest brand on earth. But is it worth anything?
On conventional arithmetic the impact of the wedding on the economy looks to be broadly neutral, maybe slightly positive. On the one hand it is disruptive, not just because of the extra day of holiday but because it comes in the middle of a whole wodge of extra days off, with the late Easter jumbling up with the early May bank holiday. You would normally expect any lost output to be recovered quickly, as common sense would suggest. But if you look back at the precedent of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in June 2002, there was indeed a sharp fall in industrial output that was not immediately offset by subsequent gains.