Are Athletes Doped? Some Theoretical Arguments and Empirical Evidence

Dilger Alexander, Frick Bernd, Tolsdorf Frank


Zusammenfassung
Sports fans all over the world have recently witnessed an increasing number of spectacular doping cases, leading to considerable annoyance in the public. However, our knowledge regarding the prevalence of doping is still quite limited, leading some people to speculate that (nearly) all professional athletes are doped and possibly even have to be doped to be good enough to compete successfully in highly selective tournaments. On the other hand, particularly representatives of the sports associations pretend that since the number of positively tested athletes remains small, there are only a few "black sheep," while in general, the world of sport is clean and fair. In the recent past, a number of theoretical models have been developed that can be empirically tested, which, in the end, may lead to the formulation of policy recommendations (ranging from higher sanctions to legalizing doping). We review the more important models and present anecdotal as well as some quantitative empirical evidence on the prevalence as well as the determinants of doping.

Schlüsselwörter
information contests games



Publikationstyp
Forschungsartikel (Zeitschrift)

Begutachtet
Ja

Publikationsstatus
Veröffentlicht

Jahr
2007

Fachzeitschrift
Contemporary Economic Policy

Band
25

Ausgabe
4

Erste Seite
604

Letzte Seite
615

Sprache
Englisch

ISSN
1074-3529

DOI

Gesamter Text