Mancur Olson

"Regulation is often captured by the industries it is meant to regulate."

"Small groups are privileged in their capacity for collective action."

"Institutional sclerosis accumulates gradually and becomes difficult to reverse."

"The provision of club goods requires mechanisms to exclude free riders."

"Nations rise when they create institutions that encourage innovation and investment."

"The logic of collective action explains the tendency toward special interest legislation."

"Organizations must create incentive structures that align member behavior with organizational goals."

"The efficiency of resource use depends critically on property rights and incentive structures."

"Power in democracies flows to those who can organize voters around their interests."

"Institutional change is difficult because beneficiaries of existing arrangements resist reform."

"Economic decline is often preceded by the proliferation of rent-seeking organizations."

"The test of institutional effectiveness is whether it produces outcomes better than alternatives."

"Large encompassing organizations have different political objectives than small narrow ones."

"The provision of collective goods requires either coercion or selective incentives."

"Nations that maintain institutional flexibility adapt better to economic change."

"The paradox of collective action is that individual rationality can produce collective irrationality."

"Markets work well when transaction costs are low and property rights are clear."

"Democratic institutions do not guarantee that government will serve the common good."

"The distribution of power within organizations shapes their policies and outcomes."

"Institutional arrangements that worked in one era may become counterproductive in another."

"Nations decline when their institutions become rigid and unable to adapt."

"The provision of public goods is inherently vulnerable to free riding."

"Organized interests will almost always prevail over the unorganized public interest."

"The stability of political systems depends on how well they manage conflicting interests."

"Institutions are humanly devised constraints that shape individual and organizational behavior."

"Economic prosperity requires institutions that reward productive rather than extractive activity."

"The power of organized groups comes from their ability to control member behavior."

"Nations with distributed power structures adapt more successfully to change than centralized ones."

"The solution to collective action problems requires institutions that change incentives."

"Selective incentives are the key mechanism through which organizations solve free rider problems."