Western success at the Olympics, in soccer, and in tennis is closely correlated with aggregate income in the country under consideration. Socialist performance does not fit into this explanation because the public-good aspect of international sporting success bears more forcefully on centrally planned allocative decisions than on results produced by the market. This explains why Socialist countries overachieve at the Olympics, but perform poorly in professional sports with high marketability such as tennis. Those Socialist countries, however, which successfully support their athletes competing in Western pro sports pay the price of a rather mediocre national performance at the Olympiads.
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