What To Do With All Those Super Bowl Shirts

Somewhere in Texas, there are boxes upon boxes full of pre-printed t-shirts declaring the Pittsburgh Steelers the winner of the 2011 Super Bowl. What happens to all those shirts? The hungry children in Africa get them.

Guest-blogging at the DEAN KARLAN explains that every year, the NFL donates Super Bowl detritus to World Vision, an international aid organization that distributes the gear in Africa. But now some aid experts are arguing that World Vision (and the NFL) are doing more harm than good with the giveaway. They believe "that sending shirts destroys local textile economies by flooding the market with free goods and undercutting local t-shirt producers."

World Vision says they spread out the donations so that no one market is overwhelmed by Steelers stuff, but Karlan isn't convinced. "Bad is bad, even if marginally so," he says. But he's also not totally convinced that World Vision's critics have it right. The free shirts may hurt textile producers, but they help the families who get to either wear or sell free shirts. Ultimately, he says, "we have no real data to tell us what to do."