Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T03:57:56.320Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

FREE RIDING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2014

PHILIPPE FONTAINE
PHILIPPE FONTAINE*
Affiliation:
École normale supérieure de Cachan (H2S).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Following the publication of The Logic of Collective Action by 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 term free riding (and free 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.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 359 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alpert, Harry. 1963. “Sociology: Its Present Interests.” In Berelson, Bernard, ed., The Behavioral Sciences Today. New York and London: Basic Books, pp. 52–64.Google Scholar
Badger, R. E. 1939. “Review of S. F. Porter’s How to Make Money in Government Bonds.” American Economic Review 29 (3): 605.Google Scholar
Barry, Brian. [1970] 1978. Sociologists, Economists and Democracy. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1981. “Altruism in the Family and Selfishness in the Market Place.” Economica 48 (189): 1–15.Google Scholar
Bell, Daniel. 1960. The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Michael A. 2001. A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brinkley, Alan. 1995. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1960. “Review: The Theory of Public Finance.” Southern Economic Journal 26 (3): 234–238.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1964. “What Should Economists Do?” Southern Economic Journal 30 (3): 213–222.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1965. “Ethical Rules, Expected Values, and Large Numbers.” Ethics 76 (1): 1–13.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1968. The Demand and Supply of Public Goods. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M., and Tullock, Gordon. 1962. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Chamberlain, Neil W. 1954. “The Problem of Union Security.” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 26 (1): 4–14.Google Scholar
Child, Irvin L. 1941. “Morale: A Bibliographical Review.” Psychological Bulletin 38 (6): 393–420.Google Scholar
Coleman, James S. 1966. “Foundations for a Theory of Collective Decisions.” American Journal of Sociology 71 (6): 615–627.Google Scholar
Comments. 1951. “Resale Price Maintenance and the Anti-Trust Laws.” University of Chicago Law Review 18 (2): 369–380.Google Scholar
Comments and Notes. 1968. “Securities Regulation: Legislative and Administrative Treatment of the ‘Hot Issue’ Phenomenon.” Duke Law Journal 6: 1137–1167.Google Scholar
Dougherty, Keith L. 2003. “Precursors of Mancur Olson.” In Heckelman, Jac C. and Coates, Dennis, eds., Collective Choice: Essays in Honor of Mancur Olson. New York: Springer, pp. 17–31.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Farrant, Andrew, and Paganelli, Maria Pia. 2005. “Are Two Knaves Better Than One? Hume, Buchanan, and Musgrave on Economics and Government.” In Medema, Steven G. and Boettke, Peter, eds., The Role of Government in the History of Economic Thought. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 71–90.Google Scholar
Fleury, Jean-Baptiste. 2009. “L’extension de la science économique hors de ses frontières traditionnelles: Le cas américain (1949–1992).” PhD diss., University of Lyon 2.Google Scholar
Fontaine, Philippe. 2007. “From Philanthropy to Altruism: Incorporating Unselfish Behavior into Economics, 1961–1975.” History of Political Economy 39 (1): 1–46.Google Scholar
Fontaine, Philippe. 2012. “Beyond Altruism? Economics and the Minimization of Unselfish Behavior, 1975–93.” History of Political Economy 44 (2): 195–233.Google Scholar
Frank, Robert H. 1988. Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions. New York and London: Norton.Google Scholar
Frohlich, Norman, and Oppenheimer, Joe A.. 1970. “I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends.” World Politics 23 (1): 104–120.Google Scholar
Gall, Gilbert J. 1988. The Politics of Right to Work: The Labor Federations as Special Interests, 1943–1979. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Herman, Ellen. 1995. The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hopfl, Charles E. 1963–64. “The Agency Shop Question.” Cornell Law Quarterly 49 (3): 478–501.Google Scholar
Jennings, Richard W. 1964. “Mr. Justice Douglas: His Influence on Corporate and Securities Regulation.” Yale Law Journal 73 (6): 920–974.Google Scholar
Johnson, Marianne. 2006. “The Wicksellian Unanimity Rule: The Competing Interpretations of Buchanan and Musgrave.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 28 (1): 57–79.Google Scholar
Leftwich, Richard H. 1959. “Review of Labor Unions and Public Policy.” Southern Economic Journal 25 (3): 374.Google Scholar
Leighton, Alexander H. 1949. Human Relations in a Changing World: Observations on the Use of the Social Sciences. New York: Dutton.Google Scholar
Lester, Richard A. 1959. “Review of Labor Unions and Public Policy.” Review of Economics and Statistics 41, 2 (Part 1): 205–206.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Charles E. 1949. Unions and Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Marciano, Alain. 2013. “Why Market Failures Are Not a Problem: James Buchanan on Market Imperfections, Voluntary Cooperation, and Externalities.” History of Political Economy 45 (2): 223–254.Google Scholar
Medema, Steven G. 2011. “‘Related Disciplines’: The Professionalization of Public Choice Analysis.” In Backhouse, Roger E. and Biddle, Jeff, eds., Toward a History of Applied Economics. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 289–323.Google Scholar
Medema, Steven G., and Boettke, Peter, eds. 2005. The Role of Government in the History of Economic Thought. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, Henry. 1950. The National Debt in War and Transition. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.Google Scholar
Musgrave, Richard A. 1939. “The Voluntary Exchange Theory of Public Economy.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 53 (2): 213–237.Google Scholar
Musgrave, Richard A. 1959. The Theory of Public Finance: A Study in Public Economy. New York, Toronto, and London: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Musgrave, Richard A. 2008. “Public Finance.” In Durlauf, Steven N. and Blume, Lawrence E., eds., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. 2nd edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. 1981. Structure and Change in Economic History. New York and London: Norton.Google Scholar
Nutter, G. Warren. 1964. “Duopoly, Oligopoly, and Emerging Competition.” Southern Economic Journal 30 (4): 342–352.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. [1965] 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Groups and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1970. “An Analytic Framework for Social Reporting and Policy Analysis.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 388 (March): 112–126.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, Joe A. 2008. “Olson, Mancur (1932–1998).” In Durlauf, Steven N. and Blume, Lawrence E., eds., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. 2nd edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ott, Julia C. 2009. “‘The Free and Open People’s Market’: Political Ideology and Retail Brokerage at the New York Stock Exchange, 1913–1933.” Journal of American History 96 (1): 44–71.Google Scholar
Phelps, Orme W. 1957. “A Structural Model of the U.S. Labor Market.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 10 (3): 402–423.Google Scholar
Phelps Brown, E. H. 1959. “Review of Labor Unions and Public Policy.” Economica 26 (102): 179–180.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1957. “I. Justice as Fairness.” Journal of Philosophy 54 (22): 653–662.Google Scholar
Robbins, Sydney, and Werner, Walter. 1964. “Professor Stigler Revisited.” Journal of Business 37 (4): 406–413.Google Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel T. 2011. Age of Fracture. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Slichter, Sumner H. 1924. “The Organization and Control of Economic Activity.” In Tugwell, Rexford G., ed., The Trend of Economics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 301–356.Google Scholar
Slichter, Sumner H. 1949. “The Taft–Hartley Act.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 63 (1): 1–31.Google Scholar
Spielmans, John V. 1957. “Bargaining Fee Versus Union Shop.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 10 (4): 609–619.Google Scholar
Stark, Oded. 1995. Altruism and Beyond: An Economic Analysis of Transfers and Exchanges within Families and Groups. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Starobin, Joseph R. 1972. American Communism in Crisis, 1943–1957. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Stigler, George J. 1964. “Public Regulation of the Securities Markets.” Journal of Business 37 (2): 117–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stubblebine, Wm. Craig. 1965. “Institutional Elements in the Financing of Education.” Southern Economic Journal 32, 1 (Part 2): 15–34.Google Scholar
Swedberg, Richard. 1990. Economics and Sociology—Redefining Their Boundaries: Conversations with Economists and Sociologists. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Swindler, William F. 1957. “The Right to Work: A Decade of Development.” Nebraska Law Review 36 (2): 276–319.Google Scholar
Taft, Robert A. 1951. “The Taft–Hartley Act: A Favorable View.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 274 (March): 195–199.Google Scholar
Telser, Lester G. 1960. “Why Should Manufacturers Want Fair Trade?” Journal of Law and Economics 3 (Oct.): 86–105.Google Scholar
Thomas, Woodlief. 1951. “Lessons of War Finance.” American Economic Review 41 (4): 618–631.Google Scholar
Truman, David B. 1951. The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Tuck, Richard. 2008. Free Riding. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Verba, Sidney. 1961. Small Groups and Political Behavior: A Study of Leadership. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Watson, Goodwin, ed. 1942. Civilian Morale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Wilson, James Q. 1968. The Urban Unease: Community vs. City.” Public Interest 12 (Summer): 25–39.Google Scholar
Zieger, Robert H. 1995. The CIO, 1935–1955. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar