The role of sports physicians in doping: A note on incentives

Arbeitspapier

How to ban the fraudulent use of performance-enhancing drugs is an issue in all professional - and increasingly in amateur - sports. The main effort in enforcing a clean sport has concentrated on proving an abuse of performance-enhancing drugs and on imposing sanctions on teams and athletes. An investigation started by Freiburg university hospital against two of its employees who had been working as physicians for a professional cycling team has drawn attention to another group of actors: physicians. It reveals a multi-layered contractual relations between sports teams, physicians, hospitals, and sports associations that provided string incentives for the two doctors to support the use performance-enhancing drugs. This paper argues that these misled incentives are not singular but a structural part of modern sports caused by cross effects between the labor market for sports medicine specialists (especially if they are researchers) and for professional athletes.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: MAGKS Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics ; No. 17-2013

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Korn, Evelyn ; Robeck, Volker
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Philipps-University Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics
• (where): Marburg
• (when): 2013

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/73081
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET