China will best the United States in gold medal count at the Olympics, according to the results of a model developed by Andrew Bernard, economics professor at the Tuck School of Business. Bernard, who has analyzed the Olympics since 2000, predicted that China will take home 37 gold medals to the United States' 36, although the U.S. will lead in overall medal count.
Bernard, who generally researches firms' responses to globalization, said he became interested in predicting medal counts after viewing extensive media coverage of the United States' performance during the 1996 Atlanta Games.
"I started looking into it pretty much for fun," he said.
The forecasting model considers a country's population, per capita income, past Olympic performance and a "host effect" to predict gold and total medal wins. The model weights these factors differently when considering the number of gold medals, as opposed to the total number of medals.
Nations with larger populations likely have more citizens with Olympic-level natural athletic ability, according to a statement posted on Bernard's personal web site, while wealthier countries are more likely to have the resources to finance athletic training.
The model predicts that countries that fared well at the 2004 Athens Games will maintain their advantage this year. The United States and China were the first- and second-ranked countries respectively in gold medal wins in Athens, but, according to the model, China will benefit this year from the "host effect," as the majority of Olympic spectators will likely be Chinese citizens supporting their country's athletes.
Bernard has used this method of analysis to predict results in the 2000 Sydney Games and the 2004 Athens Games with 96 percent accuracy.
The model allows countries to have realistic expectations, Bernard's web site reports.
"Many countries leave the Games disappointed in their performance," Bernard says on his web site. "[The model] gives us a useful benchmark for national Olympic success or disappointment."
Several other analysts, including Darren Everson of The Wall Street Journal and Luciano Barra, an Italian Olympic official, have predicted that the U.S. will lead in both gold and overall medal counts.
Bernard said he planned to predict medal counts for future games and enjoyed applying his research techniques to the "Olympic question."
"With a little bit of economics and a little bit of statistics, you can explain something that a lot of people take very personally," he said.
Bernard published a paper about the model in the Review of Economics and Statistics in 2004.
