Meaning & use
club good
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Meaning
nouncountablespecialist
in economics, a product or service that many people can use at the same time, but only if they are allowed to join or pay for access.
Grammar: Countable: a club good, two club goods. Often used in the plural to talk about the category.
Patterns
- a club good
- club goods
- provide a club good
A streaming service is often described as a club good because one more viewer does not stop others from watching.
Economists study club goods to understand how prices and membership rules affect who can use a service.
A private swimming pool that only members may enter is a classic example of a club good.
Word forms
| plural | club goods |
|---|
Common combinations
- provide a club good
- The city decided to provide the sports center as a club good, open only to residents who pay a fee.
- example of a club good
- A toll road with limited entry points is often given as an example of a club good.
- club goods and public goods
- In the lecture we compared club goods and public goods.
- excludable but non-rival
- A club good is excludable but non-rival: you can keep people out, yet one person's use does not reduce another's.
Synonyms and how they differ
- artificially scarce good
- A related term for a good that could be available to everyone but is limited by rules or fees; it is narrower and less common.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: club good or public good? club good or common good?
club good vs public good
A public good is available to everyone and one person's use does not reduce it for others; a club good can be limited to members or paying users.
club good vs common good
Common good usually means the benefit of everyone in society, not an economic category of product.
Practice
Which of these is the best example of a club good?
Choose one answer.
A subscription-only online newspaper is a club good: many subscribers can read it at once, but non-subscribers are excluded. National defense and clean air are public goods, and a loaf of bread is a private good because only one person can eat it.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “club good”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.