Almost all international environmental agreements include a minimum participation rule. Under such a rule an agreement becomes legally binding if and only if a certain threshold in terms of membership or contribution is reached. We analyze a cartel game with open membership and heterogeneous...

We experimentally test the social motives behind individual participation in intergroup conflict by manipulating the framing and symmetry of conflict. We find that behavior in conflict depends on whether one is harmed by actions perpetrated by the out-group, but not on one’s own influence on...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process...

Viewing individual contributions as investments in emission reduction we rely on the familiar linear public goods-game to set global reduction targets which, if missed, imply that all payoffs are destroyed with a certain probability. Regulation by milestones does not only impose a final...

Previous research indicates that risky and uncertain marginal returns from the public good significantly lower contributions. This paper presents experimental results illustrating that the effects of risk and uncertainty depend on the employed parameterization. Specifically, if the value of the...

This article examines the nature of human behavior in a nested social dilemma referred to as the Spillover Game. Players are divided into two groups with positive production interdependencies. Based on theoretically derived opportunistic, local, and global optima, our experimental results...

One-way communication has been found to substantially increase contributions in linear voluntary contribution mechanisms. We confirm the robustness of this result in the presence of income heterogeneity. -- Public goods experiment ; Cheap talk ; Heterogeneous endowments

In this paper, we study a voluntary contribution mechanism with one-way communication. The relevance of one person's words is assessed by assigning exogenously the role of the "communicator" to one group member. Contrary to the view that the mutual exchange of promises is necessary for the...

Extensive research on human cooperation in social dilemmas has shown that individuals condition their behaviour upon the behaviour of others. However, few attempts have been made to disentangle the motivations backing conditional cooperation. We try to assess the relative importance of three...

The provision of public goods regularly embodies interrelated spheres of influence on multiple scales. This article examines the nature of human behavior in a multilevel social dilemma game with positive provision externalities to local and global scales. We report experimental results showing...