We analyze a repeated game in which countries are polluting as well as investing in technologies. While folk theorems point out that the first best can be sustained as a subgame-perfect equilibrium when the players are sufficiently patient, we derive the second best equilibrium when they are...

We propose a theory of climate-policy motivated foreign intervention to study different forms of international climate governance in the presence of power imbalance. Foreign countries have at least three options to intervene in another country's domestic climate policy: i.) Agreements with...

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties drastically reduces the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. The reason is not only the reduced emission abatement in the US, but also the...

A two-tier climate club exploits the comparative advantage of large countries to mete out punishments through trade, while taking their capacity to resist punishment as a constraint. Countries outside the coalition price carbon at a fixed fraction of the average carbon price adopted within the...

We study how international environmental agreements can take advantage of domestic time-inconsistency problems. Policymakers often prefer future policies to be sustainable, but are tempted to invest less when being in office. We find the equilibrium number of signatory countries to be higher...

This paper revisits one of the rare success stories in global environmental cooperation: the Montreal Protocol and the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances. I show that the protocol increased science and innovation on alternatives to ozone-depleting substances, and argue that agreements can...

We reassess the well-known "narrow-but-deep" versus "broad-but-shallow" trade-off in international environmental agreements (IEAs), taking into account the principal-agent relationship induced by the hierarchical structure of international policy. To this end, we expand the modest coalition...

In this paper I examine the design of climate treaties when there exist two kinds of technology, a conventional abatement technology with (linearly) increasing marginal costs and a backstop technology ("air capture") with high but constant marginal costs. I focus on situations in which countries...

In recent years, differences between traditional and green parties have been leveled with respect to climate protection. We show that this partial convergence in party platforms can be explained by international climate agreements, effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We set up a...

Has the Kyoto Protocol induced carbon leakage? We conduct the first empirical ex-post evaluation of the Protocol. We derive a theoretical gravity equation for the CO2 content of trade, which accounts for intermediate inputs, both domestic and imported. The structure of our new panel database of...