Potential Failure of an International Environmental Agreement under Asymmetric Information

The free-riding issue is generally considered to be the biggest obstacle in the success of an international environmental agreement. Even without free-riding incentives, however, asymmetric information can pose a potentially significant threat in establishing a cooperative relationship. In this study, we examine perfect Bayesian equilibria of a simple signaling game between a polluter country and a victim country over an agreement to mitigate unidirectional transboudary pollution. Our results indicate that the stalemate in addressing an international environmental issue can be partly explained by the incentive conflict due to the asymmetric information on the environmental preference of a polluter.