The years since World War II have seen rapid shifts in the relative positions of different countries and regions. Leading political economist Mancur Olson offers a new and compelling theory to explain these shifts in fortune and then tests his theory against evidence from many periods of history and many parts of the world. “[T]his elegant, readable book. . . sets out to explain why economies succumb to the ‘British disease,’ the kind of stagnation and demoralization that is now sweeping Europe and North America. . . . A convincing book that could make a big difference in the way we think about modern economic problems.”―Peter Passell, The New York Times Book Review “Schumpeter and Keynes would have hailed the insights Olson gives into the sicknesses of the modern mixed economy.”―Paul A. Samuelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “One of the really important books in social science of the past half-century.”―Scott Gordon, The Canadian Journal of Economics “The thesis of this brilliant book is that the longer a society enjoys political stability, the more likely it is to develop powerful special-interest lobbies that in turn make it less efficient economically.”―Charles Peters, The Washington Monthly “Remarkable. The fundamental ideas are simple, yet they provide insight into a wide array of social and historical issues. . . . The Rise and Decline of Nations promises to be a subject of productive interdisciplinary argument for years to come.”―Robert O. Keohane, Journal of Economic Literature “I urgently recommend it to all economists and to a great many non-economists.”―Gordon Tullock, Public Choice “Olson’s theory is illuminating and there is no doubt that The Rise and Decline of Nations will exert much influence on ideas and politics for many decades to come.”―Pierre Lemieux, Reason Co-winner of the 1983 American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on U.S. national policy

The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities

Business & Money

Mancur Olson

Economics

Yale University Press

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION

The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Harvard Economic Studies)

Harvard University Press

This book develops an original theory of group and organizational behavior that cuts across disciplinary lines and illustrates the theory with empirical and historical studies of particular organizations. Applying economic analysis to the subjects of the political scientist, sociologist, and economist, Mancur Olson examines the extent to which the individuals that share a common interest find it in their individual interest to bear the costs of the organizational effort.
The theory shows that most organizations produce what the economist calls “public goods”―goods or services that are available to every member, whether or not he has borne any of the costs of providing them. Economists have long understood that defense, law, and order were public goods that could not be marketed to individuals, and that taxation was necessary. They have not, however, taken account of the fact that private as well as governmental organizations produce public goods.
The services the labor union provides for the worker it represents, or the benefits a lobby obtains for the group it represents, are public goods: they automatically go to every individual in the group, whether or not he helped bear the costs. It follows that, just as governments require compulsory taxation, many large private organizations require special (and sometimes coercive) devices to obtain the resources they need. This is not true of smaller organizations for, as this book shows, small and large organizations support themselves in entirely different ways. The theory indicates that, though small groups can act to further their interest much more easily than large ones, they will tend to devote too few resources to the satisfaction of their common interests, and that there is a surprising tendency for the “lesser” members of the small group to exploit the “greater” members by making them bear a disproportionate share of the burden of any group action.
All of the theory in the book is in Chapter 1; the remaining chapters contain empirical and historical evidence of the theory’s relevance to labor unions, pressure groups, corporations, and Marxian class action.

The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, With a New Preface and Appendix (Harvard Economic Studies)

The No-Growth Society

Routledge

Logica delle istituzioni

Edizione di Comunita

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Books by Mancur Olson