Going for the Gold: Property Rights and Athletic Effort in Transitional Economies.

This paper presents evidence consistent with an incentive-based theory of Olympic medal winning effort. As a result of a fundamental change in property rights regimes, the overall number of medals won by athletes from the former Soviet Bloc in Albertville and Barcelona was considerably below their medal totals in previous Winter and Summer Olympic Games. A reduction in the ability to appropriate the returns to medal winning led to a reduction in the supply of athletic effort during the 1992 Olympics. Copyright 1993 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG