Club Goods
Club goods are excludable but non-rival: access can be restricted, but one user's consumption does not reduce availability for others. The category was introduced by James Buchanan in his 1965 paper 'An Economic Theory of Clubs' to fill the gap between purely private and purely public goods.
A **club good** is a category of economic good that is **excludable** but **non-rival** in consumption, at least until congestion sets in. Access is restricted to paying members, but one member's use of the good does not subtract from what is available to other members. The concept was formalized by economist James Buchanan in his 1965 paper *An Economic Theory of Clubs*, which addressed how the size of a group affects the voluntary provision of shared goods. Buchanan argued that a purely binary distinction between private goods and public goods missed a large intermediate class where excludability is technically feasible but rivalry is essentially zero. Typical examples include cable and streaming television, software-as-a-service, cinemas, gyms and swimming pools, golf clubs, uncongested toll roads, and many religious or social associations. The standard funding pattern is a membership or access fee that covers fixed costs while marginal costs of serving one more member are near zero. Many goods that economists would otherwise classify as public goods — including broadcast signals, knowledge, and digital content — can be converted into club goods through encryption, paywalls, or intellectual property enforcement. This solves the free-rider problem but introduces deadweight loss by excluding users whose willingness to pay is positive but below the access price.