Cooperation in international environmental negotiations due to a preference for equity

This paper demonstrates that cooperation in international environmental negotiations can be explained by preferences for equity. Within a N-country prisoner?s dilemma in which agents can either cooperate or defect, in addition to the standard non-cooperative equilibrium, cooperation of a large fraction or even of all countries can establish a Nash equilibrium. In an emission game, however, where countries can choose their abatement level continuously, equity preferences cannot improve upon the standard inefficient Nash-equilibrium. Finally, in a two stage game on coalition formation, the presence of equity-interested countries increases the coalition size and leads to efficiency gains. Here, even a stable agreement with full cooperation can be reached. --international environmental negotiations,cooperation,equity preference,coalition formation

Dismantling of a breakthrough: the Kyoto Protocol - just symbolic policy!

We show that U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol is straightforward under political economy considerations. The reason is that U.S. compliance costs exceed low willingness to pay for dealing with global warming in the U.S. The withdrawal had a crucial impact on the concretion of the Protocol prior to its likely ratification at the end of 2002. Remaining non-EU Parties to the Kyoto Protocol gained veto bargaining power and, thus, were successful in asserting far reaching concessions from the EU on sink credits and tradability of emission rights. Taking these concessions into account, the Kyoto Protocol was essentially reduced to a symbolic treaty that codifies more or less business-as-usual emissions and makes compliance a rather cheap deal. --climate policy,political economy,willingness to pay

Rio - 10 Years After: A Critical Appraisal of Climate Policy

Ten years after the initial Climate Change Convention from Rio in 1992, the developed world is likely to ratify the Kyoto Protocol which has been celebrated as a milestone in climate protection. Standard economic theory, however, casts doubt that Kyoto will go beyond symbolic policy. In this paper we show that the final concretion of the Kyoto Protocol obeys the theoretical prediction: Kyoto more or less boils down to business-as-usual without significant compliance costs to ratifying parties. --climate policy,emission trading,hot air

On the Importance of Equity in International Climate Policy: An Empirical Analysis

Based on unique data from a world-wide survey of agents involved in international climate policy, this paper empirically analyzes the importance of equity in this field. We find that equity issues are considered highly important in international climate negotiations and that the polluter-pays rule and the accompanying poor losers rule are the most widely accepted equity principles. Our econometric analysis shows a strong influence of the economic or emission performance of the agents? country on the importance of equity issues and principles: (i) Equity issues are seen as more important by individuals from G77/China countries or from countries with less current per capita GDP and less future per capita CO2 emissions. (ii) Agents from richer countries are less in favor of incorporating the polluter-pays and the ability-to-pay principle in future international climate agreements. (iii) The poor losers rule is more strongly supported by individuals from G77/China countries or by individuals from countries with less current per capita GDP. While these results are consistent with pure economic self-interest, the support for the egalitarian principle runs contrary to economic intuition: In the long-run, agents from richer countries are more in favor of incorporating the egalitarian principle. Furthermore, the effect of the economic performance variables on the desired degree of incorporating the polluter-pays principle interestingly becomes less significant in the long-run. This indicates that future international climate agreements could possibly be based on a combination of the polluter-pays, the egalitarian, and the poor losers rule. --International Climate Policy,International Environmental Negotiations,Equity Issues,Probit Models

Do Equity Preferences Matter in Climate Negotiations? An Experimental Investigation

This paper investigates in how far equity preferences may matter for climate negotiations. For this purposes we conducted a simple experiment with people who have been involved in international climate policy. The experiment, which was run via the Internet, consisted of two simple non-strategic games suited to measure the parameters of inequity aversion in a Fehr and Schmidt (1999) utility function. We find that our participants show aversion against advantageous as well as disadvantageous inequity to a considerable amount. Moreover, the degree of inequity aversion is higher compared to that of students in the similar study of Dannenberg et al. (2007). Regarding the geographical variety in our sample, we cannot confirm significant differences in the degree of inequity aversion between different regions in the world, which is in line with previous findings from the experimental literature. This finding lends support to the hypothesis that equity preferences are "hard-wired" and not much influenced by socio-economic or cultural circumstances. --individual preferences,inequity aversion,climate policy,experimental economics,public goods

Numerical Range and Quadratic Numerical Range for Damped Systems

We prove new enclosures for the spectrum of non-selfadjoint operator matrices associated with second order linear differential equations $\ddot{z}(t) + D \dot{z} (t) + A_0 z(t) = 0$ in a Hilbert space. Our main tool is the quadratic numerical range for which we establish the spectral inclusion property under weak assumptions on the operators involved; in particular, the damping operator only needs to be accretive and may have the same strength as $A_0$. By means of the quadratic numerical range, we establish tight spectral estimates in terms of the unbounded operator coefficients $A_0$ and $D$ which improve earlier results for sectorial and selfadjoint $D$; in contrast to numerical range bounds, our enclosures may even provide bounded imaginary part of the spectrum or a spectral free vertical strip. An application to small transverse oscillations of a horizontal pipe carrying a steady-state flow of an ideal incompressible fluid illustrates that our new bounds are explicit.Comment: 27 page

Rio – 10 Years After: A Critical Appraisal of Climate Policy

Ten years after the initial Climate Change Convention from Rio in 1992, the developed world is likely to ratify the Kyoto Protocol which has been celebrated as a milestone in climate protection. Standard economic theory, however, casts doubt that Kyoto will go beyond symbolic policy. In this paper we show that the final concretion of the Kyoto Protocol obeys the theoretical prediction: Kyoto more or less boils down to business-as-usual without significant compliance costs to ratifying parties

Cooperation in International Environmental Negotiations due to a Preference for Equity

This paper demonstrates that cooperation in international environmental negotiations can be explained by preferences for equity. Within a N-country prisoner's dilemma in which agents can either cooperate or defect, in addition to the standard non-cooperative equilibrium, cooperation of a large fraction or even of all countries can establish a Nash equilibrium. In an emission game, however, where countries can choose their abatement level continuously, equity preferences cannot improve upon the standard inefficient Nash-equilibrium. Finally, in a two stage game on coalition formation, the presence of equity-interested countries increases the coalition size and leads to efficiency gains. Here, even a stable agreement with full cooperation can be reached

On the Self-serving Use of Equity Principles in International Climate Negotiations

This paper puts forward equity as an important structural element to understanding negotiation outcomes. We first advance bargaining theory to incorporate the self-serving use of equity. Agents are predicted to push equity principles which benefit them more than other parties, in particular those which are disadvantageous to parties with large bargaining power. Based on unique data from a world-wide survey of agents involved in international climate policy, we then study how participants assess the support of the equity criteria by major parties in the climate negotiations. Comparing these results with cost estimates from a POLES model, we find that the perceived equity preferences of the respective countries or groups of countries are in general consistent with our hypothesis of a self-serving use of equity criteria and thereby lend support for our theoretical model. While this self-interest is recognized by the participants of our survey for the positions of the USA and the G77/China as well as Russia, the EU manages to be seen as choosing (self-serving) equity arguments out of fairness concerns and in order to facilitate the negotiations. --bargaining theory,equity criteria,self-serving bias,climate policy,survey data