This paper reports regression results identifying the variables influencing a country's performance in international soccer games. The results reveal that economic, demographic, cultural and climatic factors are important. In particular, inverted U-shape relationships are identified with respect to temperature and per-capita wealth. We also find a significant interaction between Latin cultural origin and population size, while both variables are individually insignificant. Explanations for our results are offered.

The bounds test developed by Pesaran et al. ( 2001 Pesaran, H , Shin, Y and Smith, RJ . 2001. Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 16: 289–326. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ) is applied to examine the existence of a long-run relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, pollution and output of Malaysia. Granger causality tests are also utilized to test for the presence of the short-run and long-run causal relationship between these variables. Both FDI inflows and pollution have short-run causal relationship on output. Output only has long-run causal relationship on FDI inflows.

The paper reports the results of regressions testing hypotheses concerning the medalwinning success of Olympic teams. It is found that while traditional economic and political factors are important, many inherent national characteristics such as geographical, demographic and cultural factors have a significant and pronounced impact. It is concluded that scope for public sports policy exists and the degree to which the inherent characteristics limit it are discussed.