Which economists would these be? The ones at Goldman Sachs, who earlier this week released the fifth edition of The World Cup and Economics , a guide to predicting the outcome of the 2014 FIFA world cup which starts today. Apparently, their world cup guides are read more fervently than anything else the investment bank writes in the intervening four years.

Who do they say will win? The odds are firmly stacked in favour of Brazil — the hosts have a 48.5 probability of winning with odds of 3/1. Argentina has a 14.1 per cent chance (9/2); Germany 11.4 per cent (11/2) and Spain, ranked No. 1 and 2010 winners, come in fourth with a 9.8 per cent chance of winning (13/2).

And do the bookies match the economists? The line-up is the same, but with much reduced chances for Brazil (less than half, in fact) and slightly better odds for the other three. Clearly, nobody believes this is a wide open tournament.

So how does one predict a world cup? If you’re an economist, you create what is called a stochastic model that generates outcomes based on a set of data (in this case, from 1960) about past matches, who played and where, did they have a home advantage, and how many goals were scored. These variables are used to create a probability distribution for every match in the tournament. Given all the statistics, there isn’t much room left for the human element of the game. So the injured Ronaldo and Pepe killing Portugal’s chances don’t matter much to an economist predicting the world cup.

And if you’re not an economist? Then you watch Neymar and just know. To be honest, though, the report does have a lot of other wildly interesting information.

Such as? The link between the world cup and equity markets, for example. On average, the report says, “the victor outperforms the global market by 3.5 per cent in the first month — a meaningful amount, although the outperformance fades significantly after three months... (However) its stock market underperforms by around four per cent on average over the year following the final.”

And stock markets of all other nations do badly? It would seem so, especially with surprise losses. The cup’s runner up gets the worst deal. They seem to suffer a “post-final bout of the blues.” Seven of nine runners up the report studied had their national stock markets underperforming on average over the first month after the loss by 1.4 per cent, which extends to 5.6 per cent over the first three months.

So it’s bad news for the 31 other teams ? It would seem so. The report observes positive GDP growth in the years leading to a world cup for countries that finish as champions. It also says that land is the uncredited factor of production in on-field success. “It is not only the skill of Brazilian footballers or the creativity of the Argentine front line that makes them consistent finalists, but also the vast open tracts of land available for them to practice.” Of course, India and China have that too…

But they haven't made it... The emerging market superpowers aren’t likely to cobble a World Cup team together any time soon, either. China, because it still overwhelmingly favours individual events over team sports (with an eye on Olympics) and India, well, because there’s cricket.

So Brazil’s done and dusted? In 2010 too, Goldman’s predictions favoured Brazil. Spain won.

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