Citation:
Abstract:
In overlapping–generations models of public goods provision, in which the contribution decision is binary and lifetimes are finite, the set of symmetric subgame–perfect equilibria can be categorized into three types: seniority equilibria in which players contribute (effort) until a predetermined age and then shirk thereafter; dependency equilibria in which players initially shirk, then contribute for a set number of periods, then shirk for the remainder of their lives; and sabbatical equilibria in which players alternately contribute and shirk for periods of varying length before entering a final stage of shirking. In a world without discounting we establish conditions for equilibrium and demonstrate that for any dependency equilibrium there is a seniority equilibrium that Pareto–dominates it ex ante. We proceed to characterize generational preferences over alternative seniority equilibria. We explore the aggregation of these preferences by embedding the public goods provision game in a voting framework and solving for the majority–rule equilibria. In this way we can think of political processes as providing one natural framework for equilibrium selection in the original public–goods provision game.