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GDP Adjusted Olympics Medal Tally

Posted by Scott Keefer on Aug 26th, 2008

Now that the Beijing Olympics is done and dusted I wanted to put an economic spin on the results.

You may have become aware of the Sunrise program’s (Channel Seven) Adjusted Medal Tally comparing Australia’s results to the USA based on a per capita basis. The results were very flattering to Australia.

I took this approach a step further and analysed the results of all the countries who won medals at the Olympics comparing the number of medals with the country’s GDP from 2007 measured in US dollars. The GDP data was taken from the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook database - www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2008/01/weodata/index.aspx

The top 10 countries on this basis were:

		Billions of GDP per medal
1	Zimbabwe	0.16025
2	Mongolia	0.97625
3	Jamaica	1.018727
4	Armenia	1.329
5	Georgia	1.7155
6	Tajikistan	1.856
7	Kyrgyz Republic	1.874
8	Kenya	2.092786
9	Belarus	2.356474
10	Togo	2.497

Other notable ranks were:

		Billions of GDP per medal
30	New Zealand	14.23789
31	Russia	17.91086
35	Australia	19.75709
41	China	32.50827
52	United Kingdom	58.99085
55	France	64.00638
63	Germany	81.02798
73	United States	125.853
79	Japan	175.3505
85	India	366.315

If we only were to look at gold medal winners the top ten were:

		Billions of GDP per gold medal
1	Zimbabwe	0.641
2	Jamaica	1.867667
3	Mongolia	1.9525
4	Georgia	3.431
5	Ethiopia	4.85775
6	Kenya	5.8598
7	Belarus	11.19325
8	Bahrain	19.66
9	Panama	19.74
10	Ukraine	20.06914

and others of interest:

		Billions of GDP per gold medal
21	New Zealand	42.71367
25	Russia	56.06878
27	China	63.74171
28	Australia	64.91614
35	United Kingdom	145.9247
37	Germany	207.6342
44	France	365.7507
45	United States	384.5507
51	Japan	487.0847
53	India	1098.945

This just puts another perspective on the Olympic results. I wouldn’t be advising using the tables as a source of picking the best performing share markets for the next year. Zimbabwe is not somewhere I would be throwing cash at the moment. It might just be worth keeping an eye out though, as going on the record of forecasters this table could be as useful as some of the more classical methods of forecasting.

One definite use of the data is that it will hopefully quieten down a few of our friendly poms who, according to my sister living in London, are pretty happy with themselves given the success of the UK in the Olympics. (I think unbearable was her term!!)

Not so good when conversing with our friends from across the ditch in New Zealand who yet again seem to have been able to fight above their weight!!

I hope those who are interested in the Olympics have enjoyed the past two weeks and let’s hope the euphoria is contagious for our share markets!

Good luck to our Paralympians!!

Regards,

Scott Keefer

www.acleardirection.com.au