Collective action and exchange : a game-theoretic approach to contemporary political economy / William D. Ferguson.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 389-409) and index.

Introduction : a farmers' market -- Collective-action problems and innovative theory -- The basic economics of collective action -- Enforcement, coordination, and second-order collective-action problems -- Seizing advantage : strategic moves and power in exchange -- Basic motivation : rational egoists and reciprocal players -- Foundations of motivation: rationality and social preference -- Institutions, organizations, and institutional systems -- Informal institutions -- Internal resolution via group self-organization -- Third-party enforcement, formal institutions, and interactions with self-governance -- Social networks and collective action -- Policy and political economy -- Knowledge, collective action, institutions, location, and growth.

This book utilizes collective action as a unifying concept, arguing that collective-action problems lie at the foundation of market success, market failure, economic development, and the motivations for policy.The author draws on information economics, social preference theory, cognition theory, institutional economics, as well as political and policy theory to develop this approach. The text uses classical, evolutionary, and epistemic game theory, along with basic social network analysis, as modeling frameworks. These models effectively bind the ideas presented, generating a coherent theoretic approach to political economy that stresses sometimes overlooked implications.