Medal Factories: Why Do Some Countries Outperform in Sports and Science?

This paper studies the determinants of elite performance in international Science Olympiads and Olympic sports, focusing on the roles of population size and income. It finds three main results: - First, population and income explain about 50% of the variation in country performance across both science and sports competitions. - Second, several countries, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, consistently underperform their predicted rankings, indicating that other factors may play a crucial role in fostering elite talent. - Third, there is a moderately high correlation between performance in the Science Olympiads and the Summer Olympics, suggesting that common and deeper, unexplained influences drive success across both domains. Overall, our results suggest that there is significant scope for several developing countries to improve how they utilize their talent pools. Future work needs to explore why this underperformance is concentrated in certain regions, with the explanation likely lying in factors beyond traditional economic indicators.