Saturday, August 11, 2012

Olympic Medals and Economic Health

The state of a nation’s economy seem to have a tight correlationship with the score of Olympic medals acquired.

As New York University’s William Easterly points out: (charts from Mr. Easterly too)

“what determines Olympic medals?” The answer is income per capita and population, or in other words total GDP.

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But such correlationship may not be perfect.

Mr. Easterly notes of the outliers and of the lessons:

The big underachievers are (in order of underachievement) India, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia.

The big overachievers are Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, Iran, , and Jamaica.

The lessons seem to be:

(1) World Bank national development strategies in key emerging markets have failed miserably in the Olympics sector.

(2) a history of Communism may not have been so awesome for development and liberty, but it’s still amazing for Olympic medals.

(3) Islamist ideology is a mixed medal producer (Saudi Arabia no, Iran yes).

(4) if nothing else works, just run really fast.

Interesting.

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