Tag Archives: gold

August 22, 2016 · 8:00 am

2016 Olympic Games medal table vs. population and GDP

Now that the 2016 Olympic Games of Rio de Janeiro have finished, I wanted to update and share here in the blog a couple of tables I produced a few days ago comparing the medal count per country and the ratios of such medal count in relation to the population and the size of the economy of each country.

To start with, find here the official medal count, which is ordered taking into account which national olympic committee has obtained the most gold medals, then most silver medals and finally most bronze medals (and not by the total tally).

Rio 2016 - medal table 2016.08.21

In the table I have only included the top 20 countries, but you can find here the complete list. There are 86 nations that have collected medals in the Games. This means that over a hundred nations have not collected a single medal.

Without doubt the most dominant nation in the Olympics has been the United States with 121 medals won, 46 of them of gold. That is over 50 more medals than China or the United Kingdom.

However, the United States has a population of about 5 times that of the United Kingdom, therefore the pool of talent where to search for olympians is much larger. This allows me to introduce the first ratio: Population / medal. I collected the figures of population from the Wikipedia (here). Find a table below with the results:

Rio 2016 - ratio population medal table 2016.08.21 selection

The table shows a selection of 44 countries not the complete list of 86. Find such complete list at the bottom of the post and find your country. These 44 countries help me to make the following remarks:

  • Small nations such as Grenada and Bahamas, despite of having collected only 1-2 medals lead the table.
  • In the top 20 we find nations such as New Zealand, Denmark, Australia, Netherlands and Sweden that tend to be in the lead pack of any positive ranking. They seem to be good as well in producing olympian talent.
  • The 4 bigger European Union nations find themselves in the upper third of the list, with between 1 and 2 million inhabitants per medal, with the UK leading the pack followed by France, Germany and Italy.
  • United States for all its dominance in the medal table is only the 43rd nation taking into account the size of its population. That is at the middle of the table. One would say that the average American doesn’t play any better at sports but the sheer size of the country allows it to find plenty of good olympians in different sports.
  • Funny enough, just above the USA we find Russia in this ranking. And just below, Spain. All 3 have about 1 medal for every 2.7 million inhabitants.
  • At the bottom of the table we find large nations such as India, Nigeria, Philippines or Indonesia that with over 100 million inhabitants have also collected only between 1-3 medals each.
  • Plenty of nations have not managed to collect a single medal, some of them large nations: Pakistan (~194 million inhabitants), Bangladesh (~160 m). Most African countries have not won a medal as many in the Middle East (e.g. Saudi Arabia). Some emerging nations from Latin America neither: Chile, Peru, Uruguay…

As there are few developed countries at the bottom of the list I thought of producing a similar ranking but with the ratio “gross domestic product (GDP)” / medal. The guiding thought is that the larger the size of the economy of a given country the more resources it will have to recruit sportive talent, to train it, to send it to international competitions, to build sport infrastructures, etc. (1) (2) I collected the figures of GDP from the Wikipedia (here; the source for most of the figures is the International Monetary Fund whereas for about 5 of them is the World Bank). Find a table below with the results:

Rio 2016 - ratio nominal GDP medal table 2016.08.21 selection

The table shows a similar selection of ~45 countries not the complete list of 86. Find such complete list at the bottom of the post and find your country. These countries help me to make the following remarks:

  • Among the top 30 nations all are small economies. The first G20 economy we find is Russia in the 34th position. These small economies leading the table translate between 1 bn$ and 20 bn$ of GDP per medal.
  • We find Grenada, Jamaica and Bahamas in top 10 in both rankings.
  • African nations that do well in athletics show up here: Kenya (12th) and Ethiopia (24th).
  • Where are New Zealand, Denmark, Australia, Netherlands and Sweden in this ranking? They are between the 25th (New Zealand) and the 48th (Sweden) positions, converting between 9 bn$ and 46 bn$ of GDP into a medal.
  • Where are the 4 bigger European Union nations in this ranking? They are between the 44th (United Kingdom) and the 60th (Germany) positions, converting between 41 bn$ and 82 bn$ of GDP into a medal. That is at the second half of the ranking.
  • Where is the USA? At the bottom of the pack, in the 73rd position just followed by China. Both translating between 152 – 162 bn$ of GDP into a medal. That is an economy about the size of New Zealand (4.7 million inhabitants).
  • We find the richest economies of the Middle East (Qatar and United Arab Emirates) at the bottom of the table, not being able to translate petrodollars into medals, despite of signing some good athletes.
  • At the bottom of the table we find some of the same large nations: India, Nigeria, Indonesia… and Austria.
  • Even if plenty of nations have not collected a single medal, most of the larger economies have. The largest economy in failing to win a single medal at Rio was Saudi Arabia (20th by nominal GDP), followed by Hong Kong (33rd) , Pakistan (39th) and Chile (43rd).

Another discussion would be whether in itself it is indeed important or not to collect medals at the Olympic Games but that discussion is out of the scope of this post.

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(1) I used GDP and not GDP per capita with the idea the GDP per capita would be more linked to the overall sports habits and fitness level of the nation, but the number of athletes that can be sent to the olympics is limited, thus GDP would show by itself whether the size of the economy of a given country would work efficiently in finding that talent and bringing it to the level required to win medals at the olympics.

(2) I used nominal GDP instead of “purchasing power parity” figures with the idea that sport talent of olympic worth needs to be trained and tested in several international events along the year, thus comparing the more local PPP figures wouldn’t do.

Complete table with medal tally ordered by the ration “Population / medal”:

Rio 2016 - ratio population medal table 2016.08.21 TOTAL

Complete table with medal tally ordered by the ration “GDP / medal”:

Rio 2016 - ratio nominal GDP medal table 2016.08.21 TOTAL

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October 14, 2011 · 8:00 am

Gold as an invesment?

If in a previous post, pencils were treated as a supposedly safe haven in case of a recession. In this post I just wanted to mention that I don’t see anything more value in gold or silver than I see in pencils.

That may sound shocking, as we are used to have gold items in great praise. Well, as a commodity, as an asset, I don’t see much difference between gold and other materials. What it is valuable is the company that continues to produce goods out of those commodities, with ever greater productivity and value added to its products.

Gold by itself is just like a pencil, assuming that you continue to find someone in the future willing to pay something for both commodities (certainly not more than it is worth at any given moment).

It is easy to say this now that both silver and gold have seen its prices plummet after the summer, but more than using the recent fall as basis for the argument, I have in mind these other long-term (as in centuries’ trend) graphics below:

Gold price fluctuations since 1800. Source: The Economist.

From the previous graphic, gold went up to 1,900 in the summer of 2011 and then fell again to around 1,600$ per ounce, in September. Well, I see no reason why it shouldn’t be around 300-600$ again, as it has always been.

Gold as an "investment"... Source: Jeremy Siegel

In this other graphic you may see how much gold is worth as an investment… well, it is more valuable than cash, but we already discredited cash in a previous post.

And still, you’ll find people running towards gold when there is a crisis… I never understood that. What are the gold price fluctuations based on?

Personally, I prefer to go to the Casino in Torrelodones once a year, lose at most some 50€, if that is the case, and kill altogether the speculative behaviours until the next year.

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March 13, 2010 · 12:47 am

An aircraft worth its weight in gold?

Airbus announced last January that it had raised the list prices of its commercial aircraft by an average of 5.8%. It had not updated its prices since 2008. You may see the current prices here: Airbus list prices. 

Boeing also discloses in its website the range of list prices of its aircraft. Those prices haven’t been increased in the last two years.  

Few years ago, I saw for the first time a comparison of prices of aircraft per kilogram. It was prepared by a teacher I had at EOI Business School in Seville, Felipe Moran, who later has become a co-worker. With this post I will start a series of comparisons, the first one being precisely that one: an update on price per kilogram of aircraft. 

We already saw where to get the prices from. The other input we are going to use is the weight of the aircraft, what is called: Operating Empty Weight (OEW). You may find this information in various places, I recommend you to pay a visit to Boeing’s “Airplane Characteristics for Airport Planning”, where you will find very detailed data of all its commercial aircraft.  (While gathering this info I also came across the following section dedicated to fun facts of the legendary Jumbo 747).  

Combining these inputs we can build the following table. 

Price per kg of commercial aircraft.

Some facts may counter intuition: 

  • There doesn’t seem to be a clear discrimination between older and newer aircraft (A380 and some 787 models rank among cheapest, while A350-900 and 787-9 are among the most expensive).
  • Smaller Airbuses rank among the most expensive aircraft in a per kg basis despite the suggested price war that was reported by the specialized press in the recent years.

With the exceptions of A350-900 and 787-9 there seems to be a very slight trend in bigger aircraft being cheaper in this per kg basis. One may argue that once the frame of a certain size is built, building a bigger one might not cost that much. 

Now, let’s talk about the Military Transport business. Do we think those aircraft are more or less expensive? On one hand, those aircraft are not carrying systems such as the in-flight entertainment and, on the other, the scale of the market is smaller (with few exceptions such as the C-130) and they do carry diverse military systems, protections, etc. What is the trend weighting more in the balance? 

Military transport aircraft price per kg.

As you can see, military transport aircraft are on average 25% more expensive on a per kg basis. There is much more technology in them than people tends to think… they are clearly not just flying trucks. 

As you may have noted I have not included any sources for the prices of these aircraft, since they are rarely disclosed. I have used prices reported by the press and US budgets. 

Let’s stretch the argument a bit more… What is the trend for fighter aircraft? This time scales are bigger than in military transport. Does this make them cheaper? See the table. 

Fighter aircraft price per kg.

Not even close. Fighters are around 3.2 and 4 times more expensive than military transport and commercial aircraft, respectively, on a per kg basis.  

We can see in the following graphic all these aircraft together and maybe spot those trends. 

Aircraft prices per kg.

Now that we have an idea of how much aircraft cost per kg (1,700$ commercial aircraft, 2,100$ military transport aircraft and 6,700$ fighter aircraft)… is this expensive? Expensive compare to what? 

Let’s relate these prices to something closer to us. 

Cars: 

  • The best-selling car in Spain in 2009, was the Renault Megane (with 52,156 cars sold). It costs about 17,700 € (or 24 k$) and weighs 1,150 kg, this yields: 21 $/kg, clearly cheaper, about 80 times cheaper than commercial aircraft on a per kg basis. 
  • More up-scale cars such as the Mercedes Class E 350 CDI (56,000€ and 1,825 kg) or the Audi Q7 4.2 TDI (85,000€ and 2,605 kg) are more expensive per kg, 41$/kg and 44 $/kg, respectively. This is 40 times cheaper than commercial aircraft.

It may be worthy to note that in the cars we see the completely opposite trend than that we saw in airplanes: the bigger the car the more expensive on a per kg basis. 

Let’s compare this yet again with some other unrelated luxury item: Jamón Ibérico Puro de Bellota de Jabugo 5J. Today it was on offer in El Corte Ingles website for only 449€, a piece of about 7 kg, yielding: 87 $/kg. This is twice more expensive than buying a Mercedes (this may be the reason why it was an offer from Sanchez Romero supermarkets) but still 20 times cheaper than a commercial airliner. 

To end this post, let’s answer the question posed in the title of the post: 

The kilogram of gold is in the order of 35,400$, clearly more expensive than any aircraft. 

After all, nowadays, we may find no aircraft worth its weight in gold.

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