Th is paper examines determinants of women's participation and performance in the Olympics. Female inclusion and success are not merely functions of size, wealth, and host advantage, but a more complex process involving the socioeconomic status of women and, more weakly, broad societal attitudes on gender issues. Female labor force participation and educational attainment in particular are tightly correlated with both participation and outcomes, even controlling for per capita income. Female educational attainment is strongly correlated with both the breadth of participation across sporting events and success in those events. Host countries and socialist states also are associated with unusually high levels of participation and medaling by female athletes. Medal performance is aff ected by large-scale boycotts. Opening competition to professionals may have leveled the playing fi eld for poorer countries. But the historical record for women's medal achievement is utterly distorted by the doping program in the former East Germany, which specifi cally targeted women. At its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, the program was responsible for 17 percent of the medals awarded to women, equivalent to the medal hauls of the Soviet or American team in 1972, the last Olympics not marred by widespread abuse of performance-enhancing drugs.JEL Codes: J16, L83, F53, Z13
This paper examines Asian exceptionalism at the Olympics. Northeast Asian countries conform to the statistical norm, whereas the rest of Asia lags, but this result obscures underlying distinctions. Asian women do better than men. Non‐Northeast Asia's relative underperformance is due to the men. Asian performance is uneven across events, finding more success in culturally connected and weight‐stratified contests. The models imply that China, Japan, and South Korea will place among the top 10 medaling countries at the 2016 Games, whereas China will continue to close the medal gap with the United States.
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