When the group is very small, the interests of the group are closely related to each individual, and individuals have the motivation to work for it spontaneously, even if there is no incentive or low incentive, the public interests of the group can be realized.

when the group is large enough, the individual's behavior has little influence on the public interests of the group, and as long as there are public interests, individuals can "hitchhike". Therefore, individuals lack the motivation to work hard for the public interests, and need incentive and reward and punishment mechanisms to regulate and guide their behavior.

Only independent and selective motives can motivate a rational individual to take organized actions in a potential organization. In other words, only when the benefits generated by the action benefit a specific organization will someone join the organization and last for a long time. This means that individuals are willing to jointly provide private goods instead of public goods.

Mancur Olson, the main founder of the theory of public choice

As the main founder of the theory of public choice, Professor Mancur Olson of the University of Maryland in the United States is undoubtedly one of the most influential economists in the contemporary era, and his academic contribution far exceeds the scope of economics, which has played a significant role in the development of politics, sociology, management and other social sciences.

Basic content

Olson died of a heart attack outside the office on February 19th, 1998. Robert Solow, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, said when he heard the sad news: "Most of us are quite similar, and knowing one of them means knowing everything. But Manser is different. He is unique. This makes us miss him more. "

Olson's uniqueness lies in his persistence in studying collective action. All his life, he devoted himself to the question: why can't individual rational behavior produce collective or social rational results? What Olson saw was the failure of Adam Shi Mifu's "invisible hand".

Olson has three representative works: The Logic of Collective Action (1965), The Rise and Fall of the Country (1982), and Power and Prosperity (2), which was just finished before his sudden death. The Logic of Collective Action successfully overthrew the "axiom" of the orthodox group theory that "people with common interests will voluntarily and automatically organize to take collective action to realize their common interests". However, Professor Olson did not stop studying collective action. Just as biologists study organisms first and then species, Olson first analyzes the relationship between individuals and groups, and then studies the relationship between groups and the higher level of society and country. The Rise and Fall of the Nation published in 1982 focuses on Olson's research findings. This book received extensive attention immediately after its publication. In 1983, it won the Cramer Prize awarded by the American Political Institute, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages and introduced to many countries. This paper focuses on the main academic viewpoints in The Rise and Fall of the Country.

Some people think that Olson's writing style is very similar to some detective stories. Detective novels usually create suspense with a shocking case, and then introduce several suspicious elements with criminal motives, and one of them seems the least likely to commit a crime. However, after those suspicious elements were eliminated one by one, the reader finally saw that it was the least likely one to commit the crime. The Rise and Fall of the Nation has a similar structure. Olson first raised the question: Why did Germany and Japan, devastated by the Second World War, create a rapid economic miracle after the war? Why do countries like the United States and Britain, which are less affected by the war, have sluggish economies? What causes such a big contrast? The "suspicious elements" in the minds of most economists are: capital accumulation, technological progress, human resources, etc. After discussing and excluding these factors one by one, Olson's "main figure" finally appeared in BLACKPINK. "He" is none other than the "hero" in The Logic of Collective Action-a hitchhiker.