clubs

The economic theory of clubs has its roots independently in two seminal articles, one by James Buchanan (1965) and the other by Charles Tiebout (1956). Buchanan’s motivation was to define a broad spectrum of economic goods on a continuum between pure public goods and pure private goods and to understand the relations between characteristics of the good, its cost and the group which consumes it. Tiebout’s concern, on the other hand, was with whether individual preference revelations might be inferred from the mobile consumer/voter’s choices among location-specific public goods. If this were possible, it might resolve the dilemma whereby efficiency in the provision of a collective good is so difficult to reach because consumers conceal their preferences. Each of these papers has stimulated a large intertwining literature on all aspects of the provision of goods to groups.