Les Determinants Economiques de la Performance Olympique

Madeleine Andreff (), Wladimir Andreff () and Sandrine Poupaux ()
Additional contact information
Madeleine Andreff: University Marne-la-Vallée
Wladimir Andreff: University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
Sandrine Poupaux: Deutsche Sporthochschule, Cologne

No 819, Working Papers from International Association of Sports Economists, North American Association of Sports Economists

Abstract: The analysis of economic determinants of Olympic performance was for a long time a macroeconomics of the cold war in which the number of medals won by a nation was explained by its endowment with economic and human resources, then its political regime and a host country effect. We adopt a post-cold war view of the Games which provides an additional explanation closer to the Olympic ideals since it takes into account individual athlete performances, culture, and sporting disciplines. Various econometric estimations that translate this renewed view are achieved under the constraint of limited available data, over 1976-2004. In a first specification inspired from the macroeconomic approach by Bernard and Busse (2004), with a more detailed country classification, GDP per capita, population, the political regime and the host country effect determine the number of medals won. A second specification adds a variable that captures cultural differences across various regions in the world, which improves the previous estimation. A third estimation relies on a new individual data base, introduces an economic classification of sports as a dependent variables and enables estimating, for an athlete from a given country, his/her chances of participating to an Olympic final and of winning a medal. Finally, regarding the prediction of the would-be medal wins in Peking 2008, an inertial variable is introduced in the macroeconomic model in order to capture an ‘Olympic worship’ in those nations which are used to win a number of medals, a variable that differentiates them from other participating nations. Another prevision is based on individual data without any inertia.

JEL-codes: C13 C24 L83 Z19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2008-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Revue d’Economie Politique, 2-2008

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/Andreff_OlympicPerformance.pdf This paper is written in French. (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/Andreff_OlympicPerformance.pdf [302 Found]--> https://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/Andreff_OlympicPerformance.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spe:wpaper:0819

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from International Association of Sports Economists Contact information at EDIRC., North American Association of Sports Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Victor Matheson ().