Encyclopedia > Freeloader

  Article Content

Free rider problem

Redirected from Freeloader

In the analyses of economics and political science, free riders are actors who take more than their fair share of the benefits or do not shoulder their fair share of the costs of their use of a resource, involvement in a project, etc.. The free rider problem is the question of how to prevent free riding from taking place, or at least limit its effects.

An example of a free rider problem is National Defence: no person can be excluded from being defended by a nation's military and thus free riders may develop who refuse or avoid paying for being defended, but are still as well guarded as everyone else in the nation.

The problem is particularly important and troublesome when considering goods or resources access to which cannot be excluded. For more information, see tragedy of the commons.

See also TANSTAAFL, Public good.


With regard to a literal free ride, see also Conductor (transportation), Stowaway.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Sakhalin

... a continent which comprised north Asia, Alaska and Japan, and enjoyed a comparatively warm climate. The Pliocene deposits contain a mollusc fauna more arctic than that which ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 31.3 ms