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Following the publication ofThe Logic of Collective Actionby Mancur Olson in 1965, the notion of free riding gained wide currency in economics. The idea of enjoying the benefits of collective action without incurring the corresponding costs seemed to shed light on a number of major issues in American society at a time when social ills of various kinds prompted policy makers to reconsider the conditions of social cohesion. Gradually, free riding became to be regarded as the standard behavior of people placed in certain circumstances rather than the exception confirming the rule that people pay for what they get.In this article, after reviewing the various meanings associated with the termfree riding(andfree rider), I follow the notion from the late 1930s to the early 1970s. I show that though it was used to tackle problems in fields as diverse as finance and labor—the study of which betrays the usual tensions between the free market and government intervention—from the mid-1960s, the notion increasingly conveyed a message about society as a whole. That an economic notion could serve such a purpose is another indication of the permeation of society by economic reasoning.

A person's contribution to a large collective project (e.g. voting in a national election) often seems negligible. A proposition of contemporary economics and political science is that it would be an exercise of reason not to contribute to such a project, but still to benefit from it. Tuck looks at this phenomenon of 'free riding'.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Olson's Problem -- I Philosophy -- 1 The Prisoners' Dilemma -- 2 Voting and Other Thresholds -- 3 Negligibility -- Conclusion to Part I -- II History -- 4 Rule and Act Utilitarianism -- 5 Perfect Competition, Oligopoly and Monopoly -- Conclusion to Part II -- Index

Free-riding has long been a contentious issue in Australian industrial relations. This article gauges the nature and location of free-riding in Australian workplaces, drawing on the 2004 Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey. Of the 39.2 percent of employees who could join a union in their workplace and who do not, 51.7 percent may be characterized as deliberately free-riding. A similar proportion of employees may be described as `passive beneficiaries', for whom the costs of membership are greater than the benefits, or for whom the net benefit is not perceived to be positive. Although free-riding is found to reduce as age and tenure increase, and to increase with higher income, supervisory responsibilities and full-time employment status, when free-riding is regressed against a range of personal and workplace characteristics only tenure and supervisory responsibilities retain significance. In general, instrumental motivations prevail over the ideological, personal, organizational and worker characteristics included in this analysis. The implications of these findings for union renewal in the current context are discussed.

This paper applies the theory of team production to the legislative process & tests the empirical implications of that theory using a unique state-level data set. Empirically testable hypotheses are derived from the theory, including predictions that free riding will increase as chamber (or majority) size increases, & that legislative institutions (such as committee structure & staffing levels) can mitigate free riding. The hypotheses are tested using a pooled state-level data set developed from the session laws of 23 state legislatures. The empirical results are consistent with the major hypotheses. 3 Tables, 25 References. Adapted from the source document.

Long-term cuts in military expenditures of European allied countries caused growing differences within the Alliance which can be seen in uneven sharing of military burden and in behaviour called free-riding. The aim of this contribution is to define possible approaches to the freeriding identification and to analyse military expenditure development in relation to conclusions and recommendations declared at the NATO Summit in 2014. The results of military expenditure analysis identify only a small group of countries which, from a long-term point of view, follow the recommendations of the Alliance in the form of allocating a corresponding amount as percentage of GDP and in the form of a recommended structure of military expenditures.

AbstractEconomic institutions are linked to economic growth because they create conditions favourable for production and exchange. Institutions can give a country comparative advantage in producing some goods. If its trading partners lack such institutions, it can still enjoy their benefits by importing these goods. Some institutions, such as intellectual property rights, have non‐excludable benefits because the resulting production is intangible, non‐rival, and often publicly disclosed. The profits, or surplus, that result, however, is rival. Foreign countries can 'free ride' on this benefit by misappropriating rival surplus through infringement. This article develops a theory of institutional free riding in which firms in one country free ride on the benefit of foreign institutions to the detriment of their competitor firms and their countries' institutions. It evaluates the incentives of firms and governments for this free riding, its effects, and potential responses to mitigate these effects.