Swifter, Higher, Richer

What determines a country’s medal count at the Olympic Games? The talent of its athletes? The support of its government? Try the size of its economy. According to a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) is the most accurate predictor of its chances for Olympic ...

What determines a country's medal count at the Olympic Games? The talent of its athletes? The support of its government? Try the size of its economy. According to a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) is the most accurate predictor of its chances for Olympic glory.

What determines a country’s medal count at the Olympic Games? The talent of its athletes? The support of its government? Try the size of its economy. According to a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) is the most accurate predictor of its chances for Olympic glory.

Titled "Who Wins the Olympic Games: Economic Development and Medal Totals," the paper debunks the notion that a country’s population — and hence its potential pool of star athletes — is the key to amassing the most medals. For example, coauthors Andrew Bernard and Meghan Busse note that the total share of medals that Bangladesh, China, India, and Indonesia won at the 1996 games (6 percent) was more in line with these countries’ combined percentage of world GDP (less than 5 percent) than with their share of the global population (43 percent).

But money isn’t everything. Host countries typically win nearly 2 percent more of the total medals awarded than their economic prowess alone would suggest, due to advantages such as home-crowd support and reduced transportation costs. The authors therefore upped their 2000 medal prediction for Australia from 40 to 57. The actual Aussie total at the recent Sydney games: 58 medals. Not bad — Bernard and Busse take home the gold.

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