This paper demonstrates that cooperation in international environmental negotiations can be explained by preferences for equity. Within a N-country prisoner's dilemma in which agents can either cooperate or defect, in addition to the standard non-cooperative equilibrium, cooperation of a large...

Several recent laboratory experiments have shown that the use of explicit incentives - such as conditional rewards and punishment - entail considerable “hidden” costs. The costs are hidden in the sense that they escape our attention if our reasoning is based on the assumption that people are...

Based on unique data from a world-wide survey of agents involved in international climate policy, this paper empirically analyzes the importance of equity in this field. We find that equity issues are considered highly important in international climate negotiations and that the polluter-pays...

We experimentally test different rule-based contribution mechanisms in a repeated 4-player public goods game with endowment heterogeneity and compare them to a VCM, distinguishing between a random- and an effort-based allocation of endowments. We find that endowment heterogeneities limit the...

We report experimental findings on the role of charitable promises in bargaining settings. We vary the enforceability of such promises within variants of ultimatum games where the proposer suggest a split between himself, the responder and a charitable donation. By reneging on initial pledges,...

Exemptions from costly policy measures are frequently applied to alleviate financial burdens to specific market participants. Using a stated-choice experiment with around 6,000 German household heads, we test how exemptions for low-income households and energy-intensive companies influence the...

This paper puts forward equity as an important structural element to understanding negotiation outcomes. We first advance bargaining theory to incorporate the self-serving use of equity. Agents are predicted to push equity principles which benefit them more than other parties, in particular...

This paper studies the incentives for international cooperation if (some) countries prefer a more equitable distribution of per capita emission levels. The impact of such an equity preference is analyzed first for a bilateral, and then for a multilateral environmental problem. We show that -...

In this paper we analyze how rati cation uncertainty impacts the optimal terms of international environmental agreements (IEAs). We relax the frequent assumption of countries as unitary actors by modeling the rati cation stage through uncertain preferences of a ratifying agent (e.g. the pivotal...

We experimentally test different rule-based contribution mechanisms in a repeated 4-player public goods game with endowment heterogeneity and compare them to a VCM, distinguishing between a random- and an effort-based allocation of endowments. We find that endowment heterogeneities limit the...