FACTOID # 7: Israel enjoys a GDP per capita 21 times that of the Palestinian West Bank and 33 times that of the Gaza Strip. Its military spending per capita tops the world.
 
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Encyclopedia > Free rider problem

In economics and political science, free riders are actors who consume more than their fair share of a resource, or shoulder less than a fair share of the costs of its production. The free rider problem is the question of how to prevent free riding from taking place, or at least limit its negative effects. Buyers bargain for good prices while sellers put forth their best front in Chichicastenango Market, Guatemala. ... Political science is a social science discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. ...


Because the notion of "fairness" is a subject of controversy, free riding is usually only considered to be an economic "problem" when it leads to the non-production or under-production of a public good, and thus to Pareto inefficiency, or when it leads to the excessive use of a common property resource. In economics, a public good is a good that is hard or even impossible to produce for private profit, because the market fails to account for its large beneficial externalities. ... Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is a central theory in economics with broad applications in game theory, engineering and the social sciences. ... A Common Property Resource or Common Pool Resource (CPR) is produced by a sufficiently large resource system that makes it costly but not impossible to exclude potential beneficiaries. ...


A common example of a free rider problem is Defense spending: No person can be excluded from being defended by a state's military forces, and thus free riders may refuse or avoid paying for being defended, even though they are still as well guarded as those who contribute to the state's efforts. Therefore, it is usual for the government to avoid relying on volunteer donations, using taxes and/or conscription instead. Although, of course, it is perfectly legitimate for a voting citizen to disagree with the level of defense spending and/or its military objectives, often seen as contributing to the military-industrial complex. In military science, defense (or defence) is the art of preventing an enemy from conquering territory. ... A state is an organized political community, occupying a territory, and possessing internal and external sovereignty, that enforces a monopoly on the use of force. ... -1... The term military-industrial complex usually refers to the combination of the U.S. armed forces, arms industry and associated political and commercial interests, which grew rapidly in scale and influence in the wake of World War II, although it can also be used to describe any such relationship of...


See also

In economics, a public good is a good that is hard or even impossible to produce for private profit, because the market fails to account for its large beneficial externalities. ... CrimethInc. ... The tragedy of the commons is a phrase used to refer to a class of phenomena that involve a conflict for resources between individual interests and the common good. ... Assurance contracts are a financial technology that facilitates the private creation of public goods and Club goods in the face of the free rider problem. ... In political theory, the Malibu surfer problem is the prospect of an individual who can work but chooses not to do so, and instead leads a life of self-indulgence funded through some other means. ... Will the two prisoners cooperate to minimise total loss of liberty or will one of them, trusting the other to cooperate, betray him so as to go free? Many points in this article may be difficult to understand without a background in the elementary concepts of game theory. ... TANSTAAFL is an acronym for the adage There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, popularized by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein and promulgated in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which deals with a libertarian utopia. ... It has been suggested that Welfare capitalism be merged into this article or section. ... Freighthopping is the act of surreptitiously hitching a ride on a railroad freight car. ... A stowaway (also stoweaway) is a person who travels illegally, by airplane, bus, ship or train. ...

References

  • Richard Cornes and Todd Sandler, The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods and Club Goods 2nd ed. (1996)
  • Joshi Venugopal, Drug imports: the free-rider paradox, Express Pharma Pulse, (2005), 11(9), 8. This article refers to the free-rider problem in global pharmaceutical research.[1]

External links

Topics in game theory
Definitions Normal form game - Extensive form game - Cooperative game - Information set - Strategy - Mixed strategy - Preference
Equilibrium concepts Dominant strategy equilibrium - Nash equilibrium - Subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium - Bayes-Nash equilibrium - Perfect Bayes-Nash equilibrium - Sequential equilibrium - Evolutionarily stable strategy - Other equilibria
Classes of games Symmetric game - Perfect information - Dynamic game - Repeated game - Signaling game - Cheap talk - Zero-sum game - Mechanism design - Win-win game
Games Prisoner's dilemma - Chicken - Stag hunt - Ultimatum game - Matching pennies - Minority Game - Rock, Paper, Scissors - Dictator game -...
Theorems Revelation principle - Minimax theorem - Purification theorems - Folk theorem of repeated games - Bishop-Cannings theorem
Related topics Mathematics - Economics - Behavioral economics - Evolutionary biology - Evolutionary game theory - Population genetics - Behavioral ecology - List of game theorists
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  Results from FactBites:
 
Free rider problem Summary (820 words)
In the narrow sense, a free rider is someone who receives the benefits of a cooperative venture without contributing to the provision of those benefits.
Because the notion of "fairness" is controversial, free riding is usually only considered to be an economic "problem" when it leads to the non-production or under-production of a public good, and thus to Pareto inefficiency, or when it leads to the excessive use of a common property resource.
A common example of a free rider problem is defense spending: no person can be excluded from being defended by a state's military forces, and thus free riders may refuse or avoid paying for being defended, even though they are still as well guarded as those who contribute to the state's efforts.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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