Sports Practice, Health, and Macroeconomic Performances

The author explores an endogenous growth model accounting for how sports practice intervenes in the macroeconomic behavior of a developed country. The model exhibits multiple balanced growth paths. For a given economy, there may be two steady-state equilibria — a “studious” equilibrium and a “sporting” equilibrium — and the model points out a long-run trade-off between economic growth and sports practice and health. The author also compares two countries with the same preferences, technologies, and human capital endowments but with different levels of sports practice and shows that the country with the higher level of sports practice also has a higher consumption and income per capita. This result suggests that, in the short run (i.e., for given human capital potential), sports practice and economic wealth should go hand in hand. Empirical implications of the model are discussed.