The economics of sports


Quest for medals: Malaysia’s contingent at the Cambodia SEA Games. How athletes compete is a function of the system that produced them.

AFTER Malaysia’s far from stellar performance at the recently-concluded SEA Games in Cambodia, the classic knee-jerk reaction would be to say fire the coach, change the leadership of associations or reduce funding till they start performing better.

This kind of negative reinforcement may work for kindergarten children, but we are dealing with high-performing adults here.

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