Enforcing 'Self-Enforcing' International Environmental Agreements

Enforcing 'Self-Enforcing' International Environmental Agreements PDF Author: David M. McEvoy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Theoretical analyses of international environmental agreements (IEAs) have typically employed the concept of self-enforcing agreements to predict the number of parties to such an agreement. The term self-enforcing, however, is a bit misleading. The concept refers to the stability of cooperative agreements, not to enforcing these agreements once they are in place. Most analyses of IEAs simply ignore the issue of enforcing compliance by parties to the terms of an agreement. In this paper we analyze an IEA game in which parties to an agreement finance an independent enforcement body with the power to monitor the parties' compliance to the terms of the IEA and impose penalties in cases of noncompliance. This approach is broadly consistent with the enforcement mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol under the Marrakesh Accords. We find that costly enforcement limits the circumstances under which international cooperation to protect the environment is worthwhile, but when IEAs do form they will involve greater participation than IEAs that do not require costly enforcement. Consequently, costly enforcement of IEAs is associated with higher international environmental quality. Moreover, under certain conditions, aggregate welfare is higher when IEAs require costly enforcement. These conclusions are accentuated when monitoring for compliance to IEAs is inaccurate.

Enforcing 'Self-Enforcing' International Environmental Agreements

Enforcing 'Self-Enforcing' International Environmental Agreements PDF Author: David M. McEvoy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Theoretical analyses of international environmental agreements (IEAs) have typically employed the concept of self-enforcing agreements to predict the number of parties to such an agreement. The term self-enforcing, however, is a bit misleading. The concept refers to the stability of cooperative agreements, not to enforcing these agreements once they are in place. Most analyses of IEAs simply ignore the issue of enforcing compliance by parties to the terms of an agreement. In this paper we analyze an IEA game in which parties to an agreement finance an independent enforcement body with the power to monitor the parties' compliance to the terms of the IEA and impose penalties in cases of noncompliance. This approach is broadly consistent with the enforcement mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol under the Marrakesh Accords. We find that costly enforcement limits the circumstances under which international cooperation to protect the environment is worthwhile, but when IEAs do form they will involve greater participation than IEAs that do not require costly enforcement. Consequently, costly enforcement of IEAs is associated with higher international environmental quality. Moreover, under certain conditions, aggregate welfare is higher when IEAs require costly enforcement. These conclusions are accentuated when monitoring for compliance to IEAs is inaccurate.

Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements Revisited

Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements Revisited PDF Author: Santiago J. Rubio
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Barrett's (1994) paper on transboundary pollution abatement shows that if the signatories of an international environmental agreement act in a Stackelberg fashion, then, depending on parameter values, a self-enforcing IEA can have any number of signatories between two and the grand coalition. Barrett obtains this result using numerical simulations in a pollution abatement model where he is not constraining emissions to be non-negative. Recent attempts to use analytical approaches and to explicitly recognize the non-negativity constraints have suggested that the number of signatories of a stable IEA may be very small. The way such papers have dealt with non-negativity constraints is to restrict parameter values to ensure interior solutions for emissions. We argue that a more appropriate approach is to use Kuhn-Tucker conditions to derive the equilibrium of the emissions game. When this is done we show, analytically, that the key results from Barrett's paper are maintained. Finally, we explain why his main conclusion is correct although his analysis can implicitly imply negative emissions.

Economics of International Environmental Agreements

Economics of International Environmental Agreements PDF Author: M. Özgür Kayalıca
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317231279
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
International environmental agreements provide a basis for countries to address ecological problems on a global scale. However, countries are heterogeneous with respect to their economic structures and to the problems relating to the environment that they encounter. Therefore, economic externalities and global environmental conflicts are common and can cause problems in implementation and compliance with international agreements. Economics of International Environmental Agreements illuminates those issues and factors that might cause some countries or firms to take different positions on common problems. This book explores why international environmental agreements deal with some problems successfully but fail with others. The chapters address issues that are global in nature, such as: transboundary pollution, provision of global public goods, individual preferences of inequality- aversion, global cooperation, self-enforcing international environmental agreements, emission standards, abatement costs, environmental quota, technology agreement and adoption and international institutions. They examine the necessary conditions for the improved performance of international environmental agreements, how cooperation among countries can be improved and the incentives that can be created for voluntary compliance with international environmental agreements. This text is of great importance to academics, students and policy makers who are interested in environmental economics, policy and politics, as well as environmental law.

Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements with a Stock Pollutant

Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements with a Stock Pollutant PDF Author: Santiago J. Rubio
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this paper the stability of an International Environmental Agreement (IEA) among N identical countries that emit a pollutant are studied using a two-stage game. In the first stage each country decides noncooperatively whether or not to join an IEA, and in the second stage signatories jointly against nonsignatories determine their emissions in a dynamic setting defined in continuous time. For this second stage we have studied both the open-loop Nash equilibrium and the feedback Nash equilibrium. A numerical simulation shows that a bilateral coalition is the unique self-enforcing IEA independently of the gains coming from cooperation and the kind of strategies played by the agents (open-loop or feedback strategies). We have also studied the effects of a minimum participation clause finding that for this case a self-enforcing IEA just consists of the number of countries established in the clause. The rationale for the low level of international cooperation that can be expected for controlling pollution is given by the fact that nonsignatories benefit from the emissions control supported by signatories because of the public bad nature of the pollution stock. The result is that signatories always do better by withdrawing from the agreement whenever the number of signatories is higher than two.

Self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements Revisited

Self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements Revisited PDF Author: Santiago J. Rubio Jorge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements

Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements PDF Author: Santiago J. Rubio
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper studies the impact of adaptation on the stability of an international emission agreement. To address this issue we solve a three-stage coalition formation game where in the first stage countries decide whether or not to sign the agreement. Then, in the second stage, signatories (playing together) and non-signatories (playing individually) select their levels of emissions. Finally, in the third stage, each country decides on its level of adaptation non co-operatively. We solve this game for two models. For both, it is assumed that damages are linear with respect to emissions which guarantee that emissions are strategic complements in the second stage of the game. However, for the first model adaptation reduces the marginal damages of emissions in a multiplicative way whereas for the second model the reduction occurs in an additive way. Our analysis shows that the models yield different predictions in terms of participation. In the first case, we find that the larger the gains of full cooperation, the larger the cooperation. However, in the second case, the unique stable agreement we find consists of three countries regardless of the gains of full cooperation. These results suggest that complementarity can play in favor of cooperation but that it is not a sufficient condition to obtain more participation in an emission agreement. Finally, we would like to point out that our research indicates that the way adaptation reduces damages plays a critical role over the outcome of the coalition formation game.

Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements and Trade: Taxes Versus Caps

Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements and Trade: Taxes Versus Caps PDF Author: Thomas Eichner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements

Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements PDF Author: Scott Barrett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Environmental policy
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Leadership and Self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements with Non-legislative Emissions

Leadership and Self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements with Non-legislative Emissions PDF Author: Santiago J. Rubio
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Environmental law, International
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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Leadership and Self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements with Non-negative Emissions

Leadership and Self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements with Non-negative Emissions PDF Author: Santiago J. Rubio
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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