How many and which Olympic medals does a country win? "an imperical investigation"

Abstract In this paper the number of medals a country will win in Olympic games is predicted. Also the number of medals a country will win in a certain category is examined. With the help of data from the summer Olympics of 1960 until 2008 regressions are made. The first basic model is made with GDP per capita and population as explanatory variables. This model is extended with some other variables such as Soviet Union, Planned economy, Host of the Olympics and lagged medal share. Also in this paper two extensions are made. The first extension is whether a superstar has a motivational effect on the rest of the team. The other extension is to check whether it is true that the more developed a country is, the more medals it will get in more expensive sports. Overall one could say that the variables used to predict the 2012 Olympic results are good, but the fit of the model becomes better, the smaller the country is. The superstar motivational effect is positive and significant, but due to the restricted number of observations further research is needed in order to check for the robustness of these results. The last extension shows that the more developed countries win more medals overall, and score better in expensive sports than less developed countries.