Riding High - Success in Sports and the Rise of Doping Cultures

Leibniz Universitat Hanover Discussion Paper No. 472

33 Pages Posted: 26 Aug 2007 Last revised: 4 Mar 2011

See all articles by Holger Strulik

Holger Strulik

University of Goettingen (Göttingen) - School of Law, Economics, Social Sciences

Date Written: January 1, 2008

Abstract

This article develops a socio-economic model to investigate the doping decision of professional athletes. In their evaluation of whether to use performance enhancing drugs athletes consider not only costs and benefits (through rank improvement) but also their fellow athletes' approval for a pro-doping decision. Peer-group approval is modeled as a lagged endogenous variable depending on the share of doping athletes in the history of a sport. This way, the model can explain an equilibrium of high incidence of doping as a "doping culture''. Besides the comparative statics of the equilibrium (how can a doping culture be eliminated?) the article also investigates how the doping decision is affected by standards set by the respective leader in a sport, e.g.\ Olympic qualification marks, and by the disproportionate public veneration of winners.

Keywords: sport, doping, approval, social dynamics, weak athletes, superheroes

JEL Classification: A13, D71, K40, L83, M50

Suggested Citation

Strulik, Holger, Riding High - Success in Sports and the Rise of Doping Cultures (January 1, 2008). Leibniz Universitat Hanover Discussion Paper No. 472, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1009826 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1009826

Holger Strulik (Contact Author)

University of Goettingen (Göttingen) - School of Law, Economics, Social Sciences ( email )

Germany