Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups
Author: Mancur Olson
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ISBN: 0674537513
Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr (June, 1971)
Sales Rank: 23,230
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
The Few, The Proud, The Worthwhile
It continually amazes the curious mind how few books are written about important matters. It would seem groups are a fecund area for study, a kind of natural playground for better minds, but this is not the case. 'The Logic of Collective Action' is one of the thankfull exceptions to this rule. Although now somewhat dated in discussions of labor matters as a whole, I found this book to be nearly dead on in its critiques of larger groups, especially on point of larger socialist ideas concerning the proper workings of groups. The discussion on when and where groups fail is one of perfect Voltairian pitch- measured, intelligent, thorough, and agressively objective.
Although a left-wing economist, everyone from a a free-marketer to a marxist and everywhere in between can find solace in the even handedness and range which Olson rangfes his examples. He appears to have read every significant book and thought ever produced on structural matters from the range of economists open to him at the time. This is something of a marvel of a feat considering the disrepute objective scholarship has taken recently.
Comparative economics should start with this book.
Rating: 5 out of 5
GREAT LOGIC, CLEARLY WRITTEN ARGUMENT
Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action is one of the best arguments I have read on the theory of groups. Given its age (it was originally written in the 1960s), it does not include much of the later scholarship on the subject. However, it is a great introduction to collective action, as the basic argument has not changed: groups in which the benefits from collective goods cannot be denied to people are very difficult to organize. Organization will more lilkey come about when there is one (or a small number of) individual whose cost of action is lower than his own expected benefits; this leads to an exploitation by the small of the large, which is an interesting and counterintutive situation.
Olson provides a wide array of examples, which are of course old but nonetheless relevant. Examples include farming organizations, trade unions, business pressure groups, medical associations, etc. Overall, I found this book to be very interesting and easy to read, as the economics hardly ever go beyond basic math. For people who like rational arguments, it will be a pleasure to read this. The most interesting portion of the book, in my opinion, is the author's argument why Marxism does not work in practice in the way that Marx predicted.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Old, but valuable, or at least very interesting
This book is based on Olson's Ph.D. dissertation in 1963 at Economics Department of Harvard entitled 'A General Theory of Public Goods.' So, this is the book written 40 years ago, but I think still valuable, or at least very interesting.
You can learn what public good is and why it is not provided (or provided only by government). But textbooks do not explain what the difference is between small and large groups in terms of provision of public goods. This book explains it in a way that is understandable to people with minimal knowledge on economics.
If you are interested in questions like: Why do many people write a book review for Amazon.com without any monetary compensation?; Why do many people contribute to development of free software?; or Why DO your roommates clean a shared living room (= public goods)?; this book is worth your time and money.
Olson wrote an article entitled 'An Economic Theory of Alliances' with Richard Zeckhauser in 1966. If you would like to know only his theory and are not interested at all in how he applied it to many examples, I think this article is enough for your purpose.
Economist Todd Sandler wrote a book titled 'Collective Action: Theory and Applications' in 1992. Mancur Olson wrote a forward to this book, saying that the book is very well written on the same topic of 'Logic of Collective Action.' So if you are interested in recent development in this area, it would be time-efficient to read this Sandler's book. Similar Products
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