Generous Legislators? A Description of Vote Trading Agreements^*

Legislators trade influence to attain the approval of their most preferred bills. A classic example can be found in pork barrel politics with concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, in which logrolling agreements can load costs onto legislators excluded from winning coalitions. I model the bargaining amongst legislators as a repeated game and show that the outcome depends on the voters’ relative valuations toward each bill. Most interestingly, I shed light on a vote trading outcome that has so far been overlooked in the literature; legislators most affected by logrolling agreements (those who bear costs with no benefit) may break such coalitions. Specifically, in equilibrium some legislators ‘‘generously’’ offer their support for bills that are not to their benefit, and obtain nothing in exchange.