Far Away Gold: How Distance to Host Country Affects Olympic Performance

Xiaobo He and Zijun Luo

No 1704, Working Papers from Sam Houston State University, Department of Economics and International Business

Abstract: This paper quantifies the causal effect of distance on relative medal outcomes in Summer Olympic Games by exploiting a panel data set of participating countries for 1960-2016. Potential endogeneity issues of distance between a participant and the host country are accounted for with instrumental variables. Based on the two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimations, it is found that changes in a country’s shares of gold medals are negatively affected by change in distances to host countries. This result is robust under various model specifications. Furthermore, no significant effect is found to exist in silver, bronze, or total number of medals.

Keywords: Distance; Olympic; Gold Medal; Instrumental Variable (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C36 O11 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2017-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-spo
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:shs:wpaper:1704

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