中国奥运第一！——经济学家预测 （我的博客：http://danielyoung.blog.sohu.com/）    发完了才发现图不见了，我的博客上的图很清晰，欢迎下楼的把图转贴过来。

Daniel Johnson预测中国的金牌总数第一。

PricewaterhouseCoopers 预测中国奖牌第一。

前者在数次奥运的预测中有相当准确度。我还没看他的论文，不过听说模型中最重要的因素是人均GDP。能否理解为：我们的体育成就归因为我们的经济发展成就？至少是因素之一吧。等论文看完后再向大家报告。下面依次是上述两个预测的排名，接下来是来自WSJ的报道。

August 8, 2008, 1:42 pm Want to Predict Olympic Champs? Look at GDP

This is item was originally posted last month.

Back in early 2000, Daniel Johnson, a professor at Colorado College, found himself with extra funding leftover from a separate project and with the help of an undergrad decided to use the resources to see whether economic variables could predict the medal winnings of each country in the upcoming summer Olympics.

Click image for full list of predictions.

“We were shocked at how accurate our predictions were,” he said. His model used five basic pieces of data for each participating nation: GDP per capita, total population, political structure (democratic, authoritarian, military or communist), climate (the number of frost days) and home-nation bias. “It’s a pretty simple model,” Mr. Johnson said.

His results and subsequent predictions weren’t too well-publicized — it was, after all, an exploratory project. But once the Games concluded and countries’ medal count showed a 95-96% correlation to his predictions (“We were so accurate we thought we’d made a mistake,” he says), people started to pay attention. Calls poured in, including calls from two nations “who shall remain nameless” asking him for advice to gear up for the next Games.

“It would be harmful for me to offer advice,” the self-proclaimed un-athletic professor jokes. “I don’t know, get more income per capita?”

For each summer and winter Olympics since 2000, Mr. Johnson’s medal count predictions have been remarkably accurate. And now, ahead of the Aug. 8 start to this summer’s Olympics in Beijing, Mr. Johnson has released his latest estimates. (Read about his 2006 predictions.)

The U.S. is expected to match its 2004 Athens medal count with a total of 103, though slip slightly to 33 gold medals from 35. Russia is predicted to finish second overall with 95 medals (and 28 golds).

But the big story this year is China, the host nation, expected to take home 89 total medals and a whopping 44 golds. The country could even beat the U.S. to become the top medal-earner overall, Mr. Johnson says. “China we badly underestimated in Athens and we could still be underestimating,” he said, adding that China’s expected 44 golds would match the U.S. tally when it hosted the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Ga.

Typically, host nations’ medal count is boosted by about 25 from its baseline performance, and China took home 32 golds in Athens. Plus, its GDP per capita has soared since the last Games. Adding to the posturing is that China is expected to be pushing quite hard for success in the Games as a testament to its arrival as a global superpower.

Mr. Johnson says what matters most isn’t comparing the take-home medal count of one nation compared to another but instead measuring it against the nation’s own expected performance, based on his metrics. “This is more of a benchmarking analysis than anything else,” he said, to gauge which nations are over- or under-performing their expected totals. Plus, the overall tally is obviously influenced by the size of each nation and how many athletes they train and send to the games. “One reason Botswana doesn’t win a lot of medals is they don’t send a lot of participants each year,” he said.

Of course, Mr. Johnson isn’t the only economist who aims to predict the outcome of the Games. Last week, PricewaterhouseCoopers released a study that predicts China will take the top spot, estimating that the host nation will win 88 medals, followed by the U.S. with 87 and Russia with 79. –Kelly Evans

Let the Medal Tallies Begin:
China Is Predicted Tops With 88 By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
June 24, 2008

HONG KONG -- The dismal science has some bright news for China: its athletes have a shot at topping the medals table at the Beijing Olympics.

PricewaterhouseCoopers released a study that estimates China will win 88 medals during the Games this August, followed by the U.S. with 87 and Russia with 79. However, the report's author, PWC's London-based Head of Macroeconomics John Hawksworth, is quick to point out that China and the U.S. are "basically neck and neck" in competition for the top spot.

PWC has conducted the study for the Summer Olympics since the 2000 Games in Sydney, and its China operation wasn't involved in coming up with the estimate. "It's just a break from our normal serious economic analysis," says Mr. Hawksworth.

Performing well is serious business for Chinese authorities, who have made topping the medals tally a tacit goal despite publicly playing down expectations. China came in third, with 63 medals, during the Athens Games in 2004.

The study isn't a prediction of Games performance, says Mr. Hawksworth -- it's more of a benchmark to judge a country's performance. The economists didn't try to predict whether any individual athletes would win. Rather, they made a statistical model that took into account historical performance, political and economic factors, as well as a boost that athletes from the home team usually seem to get.

Population and size of an economy are big factors in his model, but culture also plays a factor, says Mr. Hawksworth. He points out, for example, that tiny Australia always performs far better in the Olympics than huge India. "Everyone in India is mad about cricket, but not the Olympics," he says.

By his calculations, some 90% of a country's performance in the Games medal tally is determined by these political and economic factors. "And 10% is down to individual genius, or those other factors that can't be explained through science," says Mr. Hawksworth.

"It would be a rather boring Olympics if it was totally predictable," he adds.

For example, benchmarks for the 2004 Olympics ran afoul of both individual feats and doping scandals. PWC benchmarked an Athens tally of 70 for the U.S., Russia 64, China 50, Germany 45, Australia 41 and Greece 29. The actual outcome was U.S. 103, Russia 92, China 63, Australia 49, Germany 48 and Greece 16.

[此贴子已经被作者于2008-8-10 0:44:36编辑过]