Abstract
Elected representatives serving their final period face only weak incentives to provide costly effort. However, overlapping generations (OLG) models suggest that exit prizes sustained by trigger strategies can induce representatives in their final period to provide such effort. We evaluate this hypothesis using a simple OLG public good experiment, the central treatment being whether exit prizes are permitted. We find that a significantly higher number of subjects in their final period contribute when exit prizes are permitted. However, this result does not originate from use of trigger strategies. More likely explanations include gift-exchange and focal-point effects.
Highlights
Legislative parties consist of overlapping generations of elected representatives
In a strict sense the term lame duck characterizes a representative in the time between electoral defeat and exit from the legislature
Only the prize treatment includes an equilibrium in which players in position C contribute
Summary
Legislative parties consist of overlapping generations of elected representatives. Having finite biological and political lives, such representatives eventually reach their final legislative period. When a representative realises that she has reached her final period, she becomes a lame duck. We use the term lame duck liberally, meaning representatives that know they are in their final period. In parliamentary systems lame duck periods may last considerably longer: from when a representative is denied re-nomination prior to election until replacement takes place several months later. A representative might be in her last period without recognizing it; for example, due to sudden and unexpected death or electoral defeat. In such cases she is not a lame duck, and does not face special incentives problems. Since in this study we use an experimental setup in which reelection is exogenously given, a subject’s lame duck period unambiguously corresponds to the final period in which it makes a decision
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