If the threshold that triggers climate catastrophe is known with certainty, and the benefits of avoiding catastrophe are high relative to the costs, treaties can easily coordinate countries’ behavior so as to avoid the threshold. Where the net benefits of avoiding catastrophe are lower,...

Climate mitigation policy should be imposed over a long period, and spur development of new technologies in order to make stabilization of green house gas concentrations economically feasible. The government may announce current and future policy packages that stimulate current R&D in...

In this paper we discuss the global negotiations now underway and aimed at achieving new climate change mitigation and other arrangements after 2012 (the end of the Kyoto commitment period). These were initiated in Bali in December 2007 and are scheduled to conclude by the end of 2009 in...

We model countries' choice of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a dynamic game. Emissions generate immediate benefits to the emitting country but also increase atmospheric GHG concentrations that negatively affect present and future welfare of all countries. Because there are no international...

Theoretical analysis and empirical evidence show that leadership behavior in climate policy through increased abatement efforts or international transfers cannot be expected to be very successful. In this paper we instead show that pioneering activities, which are based on green technological...

International climate negotiations take place in a setting where uncertainties regarding the impacts of climate change are very large. In this paper, we examine the influence of increasing the probability and impact of large climate change damages, also known as the ‘fat tail’, on the...

In the last two decades increasing attention has been paid to the relationship between environmental degradation and economic development. According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis this relationship may be described by an inverted-U curve. However, recent evidence rejects the...

Consider a situation in which countries anticipate an international environmental agreement (IEA) to be in effect sometime in the future. What is the impact of the future IEA on current emissions after its announcement? We show that the answer to this question is ambiguous. We examine four types...