Governance, corruption and Olympic success

Abstract

This article is the first to utilize a set of World Governance Indicators published by the World Bank to examine what role, if any, various characteristics of governance played in promoting success in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Although no strong statistical linear relationship is found between any of the governance indicators and Olympic success, it is shown that nations belonging to roughly the top quintile in control of corruption had a lower probability of medalling and received lower medal shares, ceteris paribus. A possible explanation for this reduced success is revealed in that scoring in the top quintile of control of corruption is also associated with fewer anti-doping violations, which may indicate lower rates of performance-enhancing drug use.

Keywords:

• Tobit
• limited dependent
• government performance
• sports

JEL Classification:

• C24
• H11
• L83

Notes

¹  See Bernard and Busse (2004), p. 415.

²  Descriptions obtained from the World Bank. For further details, see Kaufmann et al. (2010).

³  All GDP data are converted to US dollars using single-year official exchange rates

⁴  See London Organizing Committee (2012).

⁵  Removing the weights does not alter the results in any significant way.

⁶  Only 5 nations are designated as having communist regimes: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.

⁷  Population data based on climate zone are obtained from Hall (2013).

⁸  These seven nations are: British Virgin Islands, Monaco, Palestine, San Marino, Congo, Taipei and the US Virgin Islands.

⁹  When dummy variables for warmer humid and cooler humid environments were included, they were found to have no effect.

¹⁰  No country that sent fewer than four athletes won a medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics; when estimation is conducted excluding these 25 nations, the coefficient on control of corruption is negative with a p-value of .097.

¹¹  See British Broadcasting Corporation (2012).

¹²  This list of athletes is obtained from Husø (2013). All cases were independently verified by the author by finding at least one published report of each disqualification. This information is available from the author upon request.

¹³  See IAAF (2013).