Highlights • We propose a conditional pension fund to combat doping in sports contests. • The impact of such a scheme is evaluated in a game-theoretical model. • The efficacy of the scheme is tested in laboratory experiments. • The conditional pension fund compares favourably to other measures such as fines and bans. This paper proposes a new anti-doping policy. In a conditional pension scheme, athletes have to pay a fraction of their proceeds from sports into a fund from which they can draw only well after their careers and if they have never been caught doping. Theoretically, this fund has two important advantages over conventional anti-doping policies such as bans and fines. It does not lose its deterrence effect when athletes approach the end of their careers (unlike bans), and it can deal with the widespread problem that drug cheats are often only found out much later when the detection technology has caught up with doping practices. We theoretically compare this new scheme with traditional anti-doping measures. Since empirical tests in the field are infeasible, we run laboratory experiments to compare the effectiveness of fines, bans and conditional pension funds.
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